Hi Friend,

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) died in 1979. But on Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to resurrect the proposal and shoehorn it into the Constitution without your consent.   

Under Article V, the Constitution can be amended if ⅔ of both chambers of Congress and ¾ (38) of the states approve. 

Congress passed the ERA in 1972 and sent it to the states for ratification within 7 years. But the ERA was unable to garner the support of ¾ of the states.   

Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an early ERA supporter, understood that the ERA must start over if it is to become law. Yet, today, Congress is trying to force the ERA into the Constitution by retroactively repealing the amendment’s deadline and adding a handful of 21st century state approvals to ratifications from the 1970s. The measure now heads to the Senate.

Friend, we need your help to speak out against this incredibly outdated and misleading measure, so others can know the facts.
Background on the ERA:
  • Although much has changed in the world since the 1970s, activists want to resurrect the ERA and make it law of the land.
  • Supporters of the ERA do not want you to have time to consider whether the Constitution needs amending today. Nor do they want you consider the consequences of layering the ERA on top of our already robust anti-discrimination laws.
  • They simply want to repeal the ratification deadline in order to ram this outdated amendment into the Constitution.
  • Retroactively repealing the ratification deadline without giving states a renewed chance to weigh in undermines YOUR right to participate in the amendment process.
Stop the ERA
Here are the facts about the ERA:
  • The Equal Rights Amendment isn’t what you think.
  • Today, American women and men are legally equal. 
  • The ERA is not only unnecessary, it's dangerous.
  • Layering the ERA on top of existing anti-discrimination laws would ERAse women’s rights.
  • The ERA would make it ILLEGAL to differentiate between the sexes, requiring that government treat males and females the same—regardless of circumstances or actual differences. 
  • Adopting the ERA today puts at risk the existence of single-sex sports teams, sororities, other single-sex spaces at public schools; threatens publicly funded battered women’s shelters, and jeopardizes STEM grants for women and girls in science.
This would be a disaster for the women and girls of America.

Learn more about the ERA HERE, and watch our video HERE on why 21st century ratification of this decades-old amendment is unconstitutional.

Thanks,

Jennifer C. Braceras
Director
Independent Women’s Law Center
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