Virginia v. Ferriero

• Decision Date: 05 March 2021
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 20-242 (RC)
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of VIRGINIA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. David S. FERRIERO, Defendant, v. Alabama, et al., Intervenor-Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia

525 F.Supp.3d 36

COMMONWEALTH of VIRGINIA, et al., Plaintiffs,

v.David S. FERRIERO, Defendant,

v.Alabama, et al., Intervenor-Defendants.

Civil Action No. 20-242 (RC)

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

Signed March 5, 2021

Jessica Merry Samuels, Martine Elizabeth Cicconi, Michelle S. Kallen, Toby Jay Heytens, Office of the Attorney General, Richmond, VA, for Plaintiff Commonwealth of Virginia.

Christopher Graham Wells, Kathryn Hunt Muse, Elizabeth Roberson-Young, Illinois Attorney General's Office, Chicago, IL, Michelle S. Kallen, Office of the Attorney General, Richmond, VA, for Plaintiff State of Illinois.

Heidi Parry Stern, Office of the Attorney General, Las Vegas, NV, Michelle S. Kallen, Office of the Attorney General, Richmond, VA, for Plaintiff State of Nevada.

Liam Holland, Vinita B. Andrapalliyal, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for Defendant.

Cameron Thomas Norris, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA, Edmund G. LaCour, Jr., Alexander Barrett Bowdre, James William Davis, Kelsey Curtis, State of Alabama Office of Attorney General, Montgomery, AL, Patrick Neilson Strawbridge, Pro Hac Vice, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Boston, MA, for Intervenor-Defendant Alabama.

Cameron Thomas Norris, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA, Elizabeth Baker Murrill, Office of the Attorney General, Baton Rouge, LA, for Intervenor-Defendant Louisiana.

Cameron Thomas Norris, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA, James A. Campbell, Office of the Attorney General, Lincoln, NE, for Intervenor-Defendant Nebraska.

Cameron Thomas Norris, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA, for Intervenor-Defendant South Dakota.

Andree Sophia Blumstein, Attorney General's Office/TN Office of the Solicitor General, Nashville, TN, Cameron Thomas Norris, Consovoy McCarthy PLLC, Arlington, VA, for Intervenor-Defendant Tennessee.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

RUDOLPH CONTRERAS, United States District Judge

GRANTING DEFENDANT'S MOTION TO DISMISS; GRANTING INTERVENOR-DEFENDANTS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT; DENYING PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

I. INTRODUCTION

Hoping to secure a place in the Constitution for sex equality, Plaintiffs Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia ratified the Equal Rights Amendment ("ERA") years after many presumed it was dead. They now challenge the refusal of the Archivist of the United States to publish and certify the amendment as part of the Constitution. Laudable as their motives may be, Plaintiffs run into two roadblocks that forbid the Court from awarding the relief they seek. First, the Archivist's publication and certification of an amendment are formalities with no legal effect. His failure to perform those formalities does not cause Plaintiffs any concrete injury, so they lack standing to sue. Second, even if Plaintiffs had standing, Congress set deadlines for ratifying the ERA that expired long ago. Plaintiffs’ ratifications came too late to count. For those two reasons, the Court dismisses Plaintiffs’ suit.

II. BACKGROUND

A. The Amendment Process

Article V lays out procedures for amending the Constitution. It says:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress ....

U.S. Const. art. V. The Article V framework thus consists of three steps: proposal, selection of a "Mode of Ratification," and ratification. A proposal can originate with either two-thirds of both houses of Congress or a convention called by two-thirds of state legislatures. Congress then chooses whether states will have to ratify the proposal by legislature or convention. And finally, the proposal becomes part of the Constitution when three-fourths of the states ratify it.

Independent of the Article V process, Congress has charged the Executive with publishing and certifying the validity of constitutional amendments since 1818. Congress initially gave the duty to the Secretary of State, then transferred it to the Administrator of General Services, and most recently assigned it to the Archivist of the United States (the head of the National Archives and Records Administration). See Congressional Pay Amendment, 16 Op. O.L.C. 85, 98 (1992), https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/opinions/1992/05/31/op-olc-v016-p0085_0.pdf. Today, 1 U.S.C. § 106b codifies the Archivist's duties as follows:

Whenever official notice is received at the National Archives and Records Administration that any amendment proposed to the Constitution of the United States has been adopted, according to the provisions of the Constitution, the Archivist of the United States shall forthwith cause the amendment to be published, with his certificate, specifying the States by which the same may have been adopted, and that the same has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States.

B. History of the Equal Rights Amendment

Congress first considered a constitutional amendment guaranteeing sex equality almost one hundred years ago. The original 1923 proposal did not get off the ground, but it heralded a series of successive proposals introduced in every session of Congress from then until 1971. See Jean Witter, Extending Ratification Time for the Equal Rights Amendment: Constitutionality of Time Limitations in the Federal Amending Process , 4 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 209, 209, 216–17 (1978). Over nearly fifty years, support for the idea ebbed and flowed before reaching its zenith in the 1960s and 1970s. See id. Then, in 1972, supermajorities in both houses of Congress adopted the following joint resolution proposing the ERA:

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to equal rights for men and women.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein) , That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress:

" ARTICLE —

" SECTION 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

" SEC . 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

" SEC . 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."

H.R.J. Res. 208, 92nd Cong., 86 Stat. 1523 (1972).

The clause central to this dispute is the ratification deadline, which requires state legislatures to ratify the ERA "within seven years from the date of its submission by the Congress." Prior editions of the ERA had never contained a deadline, and the change was the result of a compromise. See Witter, supra , at 215–16. While debating the previous version of the ERA in 1970, opponents in the House and Senate called for a deadline. Representative Celler lamented: "This amendment could roam around State legislatures for 50 years. Customarily we provide that ratification must occur within 7 years of its submission to the States. But there is no provision of that sort in this resolution." 116 Cong. Rec. 28,012 (1970). Senator Ervin echoed the sentiment: "[E]very amendment which has been submitted by Congress to the States since 1939 ... has carried a 7-year period as the time in which the amendment must be ratified or lapse in legal efficacy." Id. at 36,302. Proponents eventually relented and inserted a seven-year time limit. Representative Griffiths, the ERA joint resolution's lead sponsor in the House, explained that the deadline was a "customary" and "perfectly proper" way to respond to "some of the objections" raised against the ERA and ensure that "it should not be hanging over our head forever." 117 Cong. Rec. 35,814–15 (1971); see also Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Observation, Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment: A Question of Time , 57 Tex. L. Rev. 919, 921 (1979) ("[P]rincipal congressional proponents of the ERA .... thought the stipulation innocuous, a ‘customary’ statute of limitations, not a matter of substance worth opposing." (footnotes omitted)).

State ratifications followed quickly at first. By the end of 1972, twenty-two states had approved the ERA. Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment ("2020 OLC ERA Opinion"), 44 Op. O.L.C. ––––, slip op. at 6 n.6 (2020), https://www.justice.gov/olc/file/1232501/download (collecting state resolutions). Over the next five years, however, the proposed amendment's momentum stalled. Only thirteen more states ratified the ERA, id. at 7 n.7 (same), and four states even voted to rescind earlier ratifications, id. at 7 n.8 (same). South Dakota passed a resolution stating that its ratification would be withdrawn if the ERA was not adopted by the time the seven-year period elapsed. Id. at 7. Excluding the purported rescissions, thirty-five states had ratified the ERA as its deadline approached—three short of Article V's three-fourths threshold. So, with the deadline around the corner, Congress decided to give states more time. In the fall of 1978, simple majorities in each house passed a joint resolution to extend the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982. See H.R.J. Res. 638, 95th Cong., 92 Stat. 3799 (1978); see also 124 Cong. Rec. 26,264, 34,314 (1978).

When a few states and individual state legislators challenged the move, a district court sided with the challengers. See Idaho v. Freeman , 529 F. Supp. 1107 (D....