- Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
- The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
- This amendment shall take place two years after the date of ratification.
However, the Equal Rights Amendment has never been ratified. Phyllis Schlafly and other opponents led a successful political campaign against the ERA, and enough states refused to ratify it in the 1970s. Congress extended the deadline to ratify this amendment to 1982, three years later than the original deadline of 1979. Still, only 35 states ratified the ERA by 1982. 38 states needed to approve for it to be written in the Constitution.
The deadline to ratify has never been extended past 1982. However, in February 2020, the House voted to remove the deadline for ratifying the amendment. The 232-183 vote means that the majority of the House wants to revive the ERA. And since 2017, three states - Illinois, Nevada, and Virginia - ratified the amendment. Even though this essentially brings the total number of states up to 38, five states rescinded their ratification before 1982, so there are only 33 who have voted to ratify the ERA. The House's vote, though, to remove the deadline is a monumental step in allowing the passage of the ERA in the future.
The issue, however, is that there is no legal consensus on whether or not Congress can remove the deadline to ratifying an amendment. Supporters say that the removal of this deadline will allow the ERA to be put in place, which would promote equality for women. For example, some lawyers say the ERA will protect women economically. Opponents emphasize the issue of abortion, and they believe that the ERA will increase the legislation allowing abortions in the United States.
Most 2020 Democratic presidential candidates have expressed their support for the ERA. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Joe Biden have all shown their support for reintroducing and passing the Equal Rights Amendment. The ratification of it today primarily follows party lines. In the vote to remove the deadline, zero democrats opposed the measure and only five Republicans supported it. Additionally, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican, KY) opposes the ERA and states that the Trump administration considers it "expired." Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, CA) supports the amendment and has pushed for its addition to the Constitution.
Ultimately, the ERA remains just as divisive today as it did in the late '70s. Although the ERA is something that does not seem controversial, people continue to debate its implications and its effects on the United States.
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I found your post about the ERA very informative and appreciated that you mentioned Phyllis Schlafly and how she led a successful political campaign against the ERA. Something that I find interesting is that she believed that women enjoy superior rights and shouldn't have to settle for equal rights. Some of her arguments are still relevant today considering that a passing of the ERA would result in WIC benefits for single and low-income mothers would be done away with, the removal of workplace laws that provide special accommodations for pregnant women, social Security benefits for stay-at-home mothers, no more exemption of women from the military draft and front-line combat, and the removal of gender designations for bathrooms, locker rooms, jails and hospital rooms. These issues have been brought up multiple times by those against the ERA and represent the ever-present opposition to it.
ReplyDeleteI thought your post was really interesting, and I wanted to add that the struggle that women went through to gain equal rights was unsuccessful, especially in comparison to the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. They were able to get the 15th amendment passed and make discrimination based on race unconstitutional, but women were unable to achieve the same thing. The campaign to gain suffrage for black Americans preceded the women's suffrage movement, and while the black movement was to be considered as part of the same race, women were fighting to be seen outside of 'traditional' American values, which apparently were a lot harder to get people to change their beliefs in.
ReplyDeletehttps://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/right-to-vote-suffrage-women-african