The Constitution doesn''t specify a deadline for states to ratify amendments, but the Supreme Court ruled in Dillon v. Gloss (1921) that Congress can set reasonable time limits. Since the Eighteenth Amendment establishing Prohibition in 1917, Congress typically includes seven-year deadlines in amendment proposals. The Equal Rights Amendment hit this limit—Congress proposed it in 1972 with a seven-year deadline, extended it to 1982, but only 35 of the needed 38 states ratified before time expired. Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia ratified decades later in 2017, 2018, and 2020, reigniting legal debates about whether expired deadlines still matter. The Twenty-seventh Amendment shows deadlines aren''t always fatal: originally proposed in 1789 without a time limit, it languished for two centuries before states resumed ratifying in the 1970s, finally reaching the three-fourths threshold in 1992. Courts haven''t definitively resolved whether Congress can extend or remove deadlines after they pass, or whether old ratifications count once a deadline expires.