(Nov. 10, 2022) Nevada voters have adopted what is widely considered the most comprehensive state version of the Equal Rights Amendment in the nation, a sweeping update that puts protections in the state Constitution for people who have historically been marginalized.
The Associated Press called the result for Question 1 on Nevada's ballot on Thursday after the midterm election.
Nevada’s ERA amends the state Constitution to ensure equal rights for all, “regardless of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin.”
As of Thursday at 3 p.m., votes to adopt Question one totaled one away from 493,600.
365,075 have voted no.
This is a more wide-ranging amendment than the federal ERA that Nevada adopted in 2017, which outlaws discrimination based on sex, though the push to ratify it in the U.S. Constitution remains gridlocked.
Proponents of Nevada’s ERA say that it will provide new tools to challenge discrimination and close loopholes where those rights are not necessarily guaranteed. Nevada Sen.
Pat Spearman, a Democrat from North Las Vegas who co-sponsored the bill to get it on the ballot, cited age protections for older workers laid off during the pandemic and transgender people having their identity protected as tangible differences that the amendment will make.
(Gabe Stern with the Associated Press assisted with this report.)
