<P> In 1978--as the 1979 deadline approached--the 95th Congress adopted House Joint Resolution No. 638 (H.J. Res. 638), by Representative Elizabeth Holtzman of New York, which purported to extend the ERA's ratification deadline to June 30, 1982 . H.J. Res. 638 received less than two - thirds of the vote (a simple majority, not a supermajority) in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; for that reason, ERA supporters deemed it necessary that H.J. Res. 638 be transmitted to then President Jimmy Carter for signature as a safety precaution . Carter signed the joint resolution, though he questioned--on procedural grounds--the propriety of his doing so . During this disputed extension, no additional states ratified or rescinded . </P> <P> No additional states ratified the ERA during that extra period of slightly more than three years . On June 18, 1980, a resolution in the Illinois House of Representatives resulted in a vote of 102 - 71 in favor, but Illinois required a three - fifths majority on constitutional amendments and so the measure failed by five votes . In 1982, seven female ERA supporters went on a fast and seventeen chained themselves to the door of the Illinois senate chamber; none of this resulted in any state ratifications . The closest the ERA came to gaining an additional ratification between the original deadline of March 22, 1979 and the revised June 30, 1982, expiration date was when it was approved by the Florida House of Representatives on June 21, 1982 . In the final week before the deadline, that ratifying resolution was defeated in the Florida Senate by a vote of 16 yeas and 22 nays . Even if Florida had ratified the ERA, the proposed amendment would still have been two states short of the required 38 (seven states short if the rescissions were valid). </P> <P> According to research by Professor Jules B. Gerard, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, of the 35 legislatures that passed ratification resolutions, 24 explicitly referred to the 1979 deadline . </P> <P> On December 23, 1981, in Idaho v. Freeman, the United States District Court for the District of Idaho ruled that the rescissions--all of which occurred before the original 1979 ratification deadline--were valid and that the ERA's deadline extension was unconstitutional . The National Organization for Women appealed both rulings . On October 4, 1982, in NOW v. Idaho, 459 U.S. 809 (1982), the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the ruling in Idaho v. Freeman and declared the entire matter moot on the grounds that the ERA was dead for the reason given by the Administrator of General Services that the ERA had not received the required number of ratifications (38), so that "the Amendment has failed of adoption no matter what the resolution of the legal issues presented here ." </P>

When was efforts to pass ratifying the equal rights amendment abandoned