by Laurel Duggan
Congressional Democrats are attempting to add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution about fifty years after states failed to ratify it by introducing legislation stating that it has, in fact, been ratified, according to The New York Times.
Congress passed the ERA in 1972 with a seven-year deadline for ratification, but only 35 states ratified it by 1982, falling short of the required three-quarters of states. Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Democratic Missouri Rep. Cori Bush introduced a proposal Thursday which ignores the deadline, states that the ERA has already been ratified as the 28th Amendment and urges the National Archivist to certify and publish it immediately, according to the NYT.
“For us, it is already done. The E.R.A. is the 28th Amendment. We just need the archivist to publish it,” Bush said, according to the NYT.
The amendment’s plain text states that women have equal rights to men throughout the U.S., but legal experts view the measure as a way to push through pro-abortion measures as well as policies erasing sex distinctions in public restrooms and other traditionally sex-segregated spaces.
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told the outlet the move would not successfully ratify the ERA, but instead will serve as a way for Democrats to put Republicans on defense on the abortion issue in order to hurt them politically.
“This is a political rather than a legal struggle,” he said. “It’s not going to pass. The real question is what political message is being sent. In a political environment like this, you throw at the wall whatever you can.”
Gillibrand and Bush are framing the ERA in the context of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, with Bush arguing that it’s “packed with potential to protect access to abortion care nationwide, defeat bans on gender-affirming health care, shore up marriage equality, eliminate the gender wage gap, help end the epidemic of violence against women and girls, and so much more,” according to the NYT.
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Laurel Duggan is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
