Former President Joe Biden announced on Friday, January 17th, that he believes the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) should be considered a ratified addition to the U.S. Constitution. However, not everyone agrees with this opinion. The Equal Rights Amendment has been around since the 1970s. Why is this? And what exactly is the history behind this controversial amendment?

Background-

What exactly is the Equal Rights Amendment? The amendment protects and prevents the government from discriminating against citizens based on sex. The ERA was first drafted in 1923 by the two main leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman. From then until 1970, ERA was introduced in every Congressional session.

In 1970, two women representatives, Martha Griffiths and Shirley Chisholm, decided to make the ERA a top legislative priority. However, they had to overcome resistance from the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Emmanuel Cellar, who had refused to hold a hearing about the amendment for over 30 years.

In March 1972, the amendment passed with full bipartisan support from both chambers of Congress, exceeding the two-thirds majority required to pass. The states were to ratify the amendment within seven years. Unfortunately, the amendment wasn’t ratified by the deadline of 1979.

The original deadline-

Within a year of sending the amendment to the states, 30 out of the required 38 ratified it. Soon after, the momentum of the campaign for ratification slowed down as anti-ERA activists protested against it. These activists believed that this amendment would lead to other progressive acts, such as same-sex marriage, women in the military, gender-neutral bathrooms, and so on. 

By 1977, only five more states had ratified the amendment. Because of this, Congress decided to extend the deadline by three more years, in 1981, hoping to get more signatures from the states. Unfortunately, this didn’t work, as no new states ratified the amendment. To make matters worse for the supporters, five states voted to rescind their earlier support. By 1983, active supporters had given up all hope, thinking the amendment would never pass. 

Four decades later, support for the amendment started to stir again. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union: Women’s Rights Project, successfully brought the amendment back into people’s minds. Since then, three more states ratified the amendment, with the most recent being Virginia, which ratified the amendment on January 27th, 2020. The Equal Rights Amendment was now ratified by the required 38 states, not counting the five states that wanted to rescind their previous ratification. 

Where to go from here-

To this day, both sides still fight over whether this amendment is necessary for the United States. Advocates for ERA claim that the amendment is important support for other amendments such as the 19th (women’s right to vote), and the 14th (equal protection for all American citizens). They believe that this amendment will not only help to grant all genders the same amount of protection, but it will also grant protection for people of color, queer, and transgender people as well. As for the opposing side, they believe that forced equality will discourage men from supporting their families and that it goes against their religion. 

Is there a future for this amendment to pass? Even though it is decades past its “due date,” many still have hopes for it. 

Credit:

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-equal-rights-amendment-era-16b554dfe913797a52f894b72684bc45

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained

https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/era-ratification-map

Photo Credit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_Equal_Rights_Amendment.png