Prairie State Wire

A federal judge has rejected three states' arguments to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment by ruling the deadline had passed.

Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled on March 5 that Illinois, Virginia and Nevada's ratification amendments all arrived "too late to count."

Authorities from the three states had recently filed suit against the archivist of the U.S. to "carry out his statutory duty" of publishing and certifying the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

More recently, the three states moved to ratify the measure. Virginia claimed to be the 38th state to ratify the amendment in 2020.

The Democratic attorney generals from those three states insisted that Congress' stipulate deadline has not elapsed because the time frame is not featured in the amendment's body text. They also argued that Congress instituting deadlines to ratify is unconstitutional.

Contreras further stipulated that a "ratification deadline in a proposing resolution's introduction is just as effective as one in the text of a proposed amendment."

The judge also ruled that the plaintiffs "lack standing to sue" because the archivist's "refusal to publish and certify the ERA thus does not cause them a concrete injury that could be remedied by ordering him to act," ABC 7 Eyewitness News reported.