The ratified ERA still remains unpublished and people across our country continue to be denied equal rights under the law on account of sex.
John,
BREAKING: The American Bar Association has passed a resolution declaring the Equal Rights Amendment is the 28th Amendment of our Constitution and calling for its immediate publication.
In a report accompanying the resolution, Karol Corbin Walker, Chair of the ABA’s Commission on Women in the Profession, stated, “[T]he existing federal and state laws prohibiting sex discrimination are – at best – a patchwork…We need the ERA – now. Before it is too late.”
The publication and certification of the Equal Rights Amendment is long overdue. That’s why we’ve led a coalition of democracy and gender equality advocates in issuing a letter to President Biden urging him to instruct the Archivist of the U.S., Dr. Colleen Shogan, to fulfill her duty to publish the ERA and declare that it has become part of the Constitution of the United States.
It has now been more than four years since Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. Then-National Archivist David Ferriero should have promptly fulfilled his duty to publish the Amendment. Instead, he incorrectly deferred to the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which under the direction of former Attorney General Bill Barr, argued in a January 2020 memo that the ERA was not properly ratified because the final states to ratify the amendment did so outside a time limit imposed by Congress. Ferriero refused to certify and publish the ERA. But, as we have long argued and the ABA agrees, this deadline is invalid and unenforceable, as it is not included in the text of the Amendment. It has no power to block the ERA, which has been approved by two-thirds of Congress and ratified by three-fourths of U.S. states.
The ratified ERA still remains unpublished and people across our country continue to be denied equal rights under the law on account of sex. Now Dr. Shogan must fulfill her duty and publish the ERA.
