Nevada ratified the Equal Rights Amendment on March 20, 2017, becoming the 36th state to approve it. The vote came when the Nevada Assembly passed Senate Joint Resolution 2, more than three decades after the congressional ratification deadline had expired and after the state legislature had rejected the amendment three times in the 1970s.
How the 2017 Vote Came Together
State Senator Pat Spearman, a Democrat from North Las Vegas, introduced SJR2 in the 2017 legislative session. The Senate passed it first, on March 1, 2017, by a vote of 13 to 8. Democrats were joined by one independent and one Republican senator.
The Assembly took it up next and approved the resolution 28 to 14 on March 20, with one Republican assemblywoman crossing party lines in favor. That Assembly vote completed Nevada’s ratification and made it the first state to approve the ERA since the early 1980s.1U.S. Senate. The Senate Passes the Equal Rights Amendment
Why Nevada Took So Long
Nevada had chances to ratify during the original national push and turned the amendment down every time. The legislature voted it down in 1973, 1975, and 1977. In the first two of those sessions, the ERA cleared the Assembly but died in the Senate. In 1977, the chambers switched roles: the Senate approved it and the Assembly killed it. Nevada voters then rejected the amendment by a two-to-one margin in a 1978 advisory ballot question.
The issue went quiet in Carson City for decades. A resolution surfaced in the 2015 session but never made it out of committee. The 2017 session, with a different legislative composition and a determined sponsor, produced the votes that earlier efforts had lacked.
What Nevada’s Ratification Set in Motion
When Nevada voted yes, the ERA had been frozen at 35 state ratifications for 35 years. Congress had originally given states until March 22, 1979 to ratify, then extended that to June 30, 1982, and no state had added its approval after the extended deadline passed.2Congress.gov. The Equal Rights Amendment – Background and Recent Legal Developments
Nevada’s 2017 vote broke that freeze. Illinois ratified on May 30, 2018, becoming the 37th state. Virginia followed on January 27, 2020, becoming the 38th and pushing the count to the three-fourths threshold Article V of the Constitution sets for amendments.
Why the ERA Still Isn’t in the Constitution
Reaching 38 ratifications did not put the ERA into the Constitution, and Nevada’s role in that count has become part of a continuing legal fight. The dispute centers on the 1982 deadline. Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia all ratified decades after it expired, and opponents argue those late ratifications don’t count.
The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel issued opinions in 2020 and 2022 concluding that the deadline is valid and that the ERA expired in 1982. Relying on those opinions, the Archivist of the United States formally refused in December 2024 to certify and publish the ERA as part of the Constitution, citing “established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.”3National Archives. Statement on the Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Process
Courts have so far sided with that position. A D.C. district court ruled in 2023 that Illinois and Nevada had not clearly shown the Archivist had a duty to certify the ERA. In November 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed that the ERA was not ratified before the 1982 deadline and therefore cannot support legal claims. Members of Congress have introduced joint resolutions to retroactively remove the deadline, but none has passed.
So the date to remember for Nevada is March 20, 2017. Whether that vote ultimately helps place the ERA in the Constitution depends on legal and political developments still unfolding.