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Two key Texas amendments passed
On this day in 1972, Texas voters passed the Texas Equal Rights and the
Constitutional Revision amendments. The Texas Equal Rights Amendment,
granting women and men equal legal rights, resulted from a fifteen-year
campaign spearheaded by Hermine D. Tobolowsky and the Texas Federation
of Business and Professional Women. A few months after its passage,
women legislators employed the new amendment in preparing several laws
to halt discriminatory practices. Successful bills included one
prohibiting sex-based discrimination in processing loan and credit
applications and another disallowing husbands from abandoning and
selling homesteads without their wives' consent. The Constitutional
Revision Amendment recognized the need for a new state constitution. As
a result of the amendment, the Sixty-third Legislature convened as a
constitutional convention on January 8, 1974. The convention carried out
the first thorough attempt to draft a new constitution for Texas since
the Constitutional Convention of 1875. After seven months, however, it
ended, on July 30, 1974, having failed by three votes to produce a
document to submit to the voters. In 1975 the legislature did approve a
new constitution in the form of eight amendments approved by the normal
amendment process. The Bill of Rights remained unchanged, but the eight
amendments went before the voters on November 4, 1975, in a special
election. They were all defeated.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- TEXAS EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
- TOBOLOWSKY, HERMINE DALKOWITZ
- CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1974
- CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1875
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- The Consultation takes a step toward the Texas Declaration of Independence (1835)
- San Antonio lawman and folk painter expires (1902)
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