>>A federal district court judge ruled late Friday March 5th that recent state votes to ratify the proposed Equal Rights Amendment came too late to make it part of the Constitution. The ruling was a defeat for ERA supporters and the three states that asked the judge to declare that the amendment became formally adopted after Virginia last year became the 38th state to ratify it. >>Along with Illinois and Nevada, Virginia argued that the Constitution does not give Congress any power to set a time limit on the ratification process. They also argued that the deadline had no force of law, since it was placed only in the amendment's proposing clause, not in the actual text that the states voted on. >>But Judge Rudolph Contreras of the federal district court in Washington, D.C., said the vote "came after both the original and extended deadlines that Congress attached to the ERA." A ratification deadline in the introduction "is just as effective as one in the text of a proposed amendment.” >>The states now have the option of appealing the ruling. The case is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. After first passing it in 1972, Congress said that ERA would become valid when ratified by the required number of states "within seven years from the date of submission by the Congress." Another congressional vote extended the deadline, but only by three years — to 1982. There were no further extensions passed. If the Supreme Court upholds today's ruling, Congress would have to start the process all over again.