What will the equal rights amendment do

Supreme Court, across from the U. Senate, to rally for removal of the arbitrary timeline placed in the preamble of the Equal Rights Amendment. In — exactly 50 years ago — the indomitable feminist and fellow New Yorker, Rep. Bella Abzug, introduced a bill to establish Aug. The holiday commemorates the Aug.

Female and male Olympians never compete on a level playing field. Women must clear at least four major hurdles which men, because they are men, never have to clear. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has said that a strong, equitable recovery depends on getting women back into the workforce. More than 4. For nearly 50 years, generations of feminists in the U.

And all the while, protectors of the status quo have taken extreme measures to block their path. Lois Frankel D-Fla. Skip to main content. You are here. This critical amendment would guarantee the equal rights of men and women by: Make sex a suspect category subject to strict judicial scrutiny, clarifying the legal status of sex discrimination for the courts.

Wade, which affirmed the constitutional right to access abortion care, as well as Griswold v. Connecticut , Lawrence v. Texas , and Planned Parenthood v.

For example, state courts in Connecticut and New Mexico have found that laws prohibiting Medicaid coverage of medically necessary abortions violate the ERA-type language in their state constitutions. The ERA represents critical progress, but it is important to recognize that its passage alone will not end discrimination overnight or result in instant equality. The ERA, like other constitutional amendments, would expressly cover governmental and state actions but does not directly address the private sector.

The amendment should be understood as just one fundamental element of the fight for gender equality, one that provides an extra layer of protection that could make a difference in undoing long-standing discriminatory practices. Thus, it does not supplant the critical role of policymakers to take robust action to combat all forms of discrimination in order to ensure equality and adequate protections for women and people across the gender spectrum.

This work must be done with a deep understanding of the intersectional experiences of women of color and gender minorities, in order to recognize how a combination of factors such as racial and gender biases can erect unique discriminatory barriers. These additional legislative and executive actions—and many more 24 —are needed to hold private entities fully accountable for their conduct.

Strong enforcement mechanisms are also essential to ensuring that the ERA is more than just an ideal. Opponents of the ERA have sought to undermine its passage using a variety of tactics, including by deploying alarmist language to argue that many areas where gender-specific programming exists—such as single-sex educational institutions or high school athletics—would be prohibited. But even without the ERA, specific parameters guided by Supreme Court and other legal precedent have been developed to determine when single-sex programs are permissible, such as when they are used to compensate for the historic, societal, and economic disadvantage of a particular class.

Nothing in the ERA would alter this guidance. If anything, the ERA would provide additional support for this existing legal precedent. Furthermore, opponents point to the military draft as something women would have to contend with if the ERA is ratified.

In reality, women are already commonplace in the military and have been allowed to serve in all combat roles since The potential role of the ERA in this setting would simply be to ensure that all people serving in the military are treated equally regardless of sex.

Additionally, government and state officials who oppose the ERA, including a Trump appointee in the U. Department of Justice and three Republican state attorneys general, have argued that continued state efforts to ratify the ERA are moot given the initial deadline. Advocates also dismiss the attempts of five states to rescind their ratifications, given that such attempts with the 14th and 15th Amendments were considered to lack constitutional authority and were thus ignored.

Notably, the 27th Amendment to the U. Constitution was ratified nearly years after it was introduced in the first Congress. In a moment of unprecedented attacks by the Trump administration and others against women and the programs and policies upon which they depend—and the majority of American adults supporting the ERA—the amendment seems as ripe as ever for ratification. While often portrayed as a world leader, the United States lags behind the 76 percent of countries around the world with constitutions that guarantee equal rights for women.

The ERA has certain symbolic importance, communicating unequivocally that people across the gender spectrum are innately equal and deserving of constitutional protection.

It would demonstrate fundamental respect for the value and support of women and people across the gender spectrum in the way that the country has done for the privileged and powerful since its founding.

And yet, it is not a perfect, cure-all solution. The ERA will not immediately garner rights for women and people across the gender spectrum that they do not already have under law—rights that were secured by over years of litigation and activism.

What the ERA could do, however, is provide essential support in litigating sex discrimination by bolstering existing statutory protections that are currently vulnerable to attack by the Trump administration and conservative lawmakers. Moreover, the effect of the ERA depends in large part on how it is interpreted and enforced. Constitutional protections against discrimination, and existing statutory protections for that matter, are hollow without vigorous enforcement.

The opposition campaign was remarkably successful. Support for the ERA eroded, particularly among Republicans. By , only 35 states had ratified the ERA. Though Congress voted to extend the ratification deadline by an additional three years, no new states signed on. Complicating matters further, lawmakers in five states — Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky, and South Dakota — voted to rescind their earlier support.

But in the four decades since Congress first proposed the ERA, courts and legislatures have realized much of what the amendment was designed to accomplish. The renewed push to adopt the ERA captured public attention in , when Nevada became the first state to ratify the measure since In , the Illinois legislature followed suit.

Steven Andersson, a Republican who helped shepherd the measure. Proponents argue that adoption of the ERA can advance the cause of equality in the twenty-first century, but key questions remain. The answer hinges on two procedural questions with no settled answer.

First, can Congress act now, nearly 48 years after first proposing the ERA, to waive the lapsed deadline?

ERA supporters have long argued that just as Congress had the power to set a deadline, they have the power to lift one. Senate Joint Resolution 6 , a bipartisan measure sponsored by Sens.

Second, can states act to rescind their support of a constitutional amendment before it is finally ratified? Congress confronted this question twice, during the ratification of 14th and 15th Amendments in the years immediately following the Civil War. In each instance, Congress adopted resolutions declaring the amendments ratified, ignoring the purported state rescissions.

Who will decide these questions?