The century long fight for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is on the precipice of full success.
The Equal Rights Amendment would add a provision to our Constitution saying that “[e]quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.”
Congress passed the ERA in 1972 with broad, bipartisan support, including from the Republican Party and President Nixon. The Amendment then went to the states for ratification. By the late 1970s, the legislatures of 35 states had ratified it—three short of the 38 required for a constitutional Amendment.
Now, decades later, the ERA is surging forward again. In 2017, Nevada became the 36th State to ratify. In 2018, Illinois became the 37th. In 2020 Virginia became the 38th, reaching the threshold set by Article V of the Constitution, which provides that an Amendment is effective when ratified by three-quarters of the states.
Suffragist leader Alice Paul, second from right, fought hard to pass the 19th Amendment, which earned women the right to vote in 1920. She drafted the first ERA and introduced it to Congress in 1923. National Photo Co./Library of Congress
The ERA has satisfied all the requirements set forth under Article V of the Constitution.
We have met all requirements set out for amending the U.S. Constitution: passage by a 2/3 vote in Congress, and ratification by three-quarters (38) of the states. On January 27 of this year, we celebrated the ERA as the law of the land.
One formality remains...
The unfinished business is the actual publication as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution — the ministerial duty of the Archivist, whose job it is to merely receive, document and safeguard the country’s most valuable documents. The current holder of that position, David Ferriero, retires this week without having done so — stopped, he maintains, by a Trump Administration Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memo asserting that the time limit imposed on the amendment had in effect killed the ERA.
The third annual Women's March LA at Pershing Square in downtown on Jan. 19, 2019. Credit: Luke Harold
The Biden administration OLC has updated that memo by indicating that the ERA lives — and the courts and/or Congress can resolve the issue. We are asking for more from the Biden-Harris administration to ensure that the ERA is finally published in the Constitution. President Biden has the sole authority to encourage the archivist to publish what has been rightly accomplished.
Take Action for the ERA!
I am urgently calling on you to contact your representatives in the House and the Senate, and the White House, to urge them to demand that the president direct the Archivist to publish the ERA as the 28th Amendment before he leaves office. I have already reached out and I hope that you will join me.
Onward!
- Pat
