The failure of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has been attributed to various organized interests, including the New Right and insurance companies. This study examines trends in lobby efforts regarding the amendment and correlations between lobby efforts and roll call votes among state legislators. Lobbyists active on the amendment appeared most often in states they perceived were most likely to approve. A second data set consisting of 6,952 votes reveals that explicitly pro- and anti-ERA lobby efforts were correlated with votes cast only by Republican state legislators. Lobby efforts by insurance companies were not correlated with any votes. The efforts of pro- and anti-amendment lobbyists, however, likely had no effect on the ultimate fate of the proposed amendment. Women and non-white legislators voted more often for the amendment, regardless of party. Moreover, changes in public support for the amendment led to partisan differences in legislators’ votes.
