January 27, 2022, was not a remarkable date on my calendar, but it was a red-letter date for supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment. Two years ago, the Virginia legislature passed ERA in an attempt to use the “three-state solution” to shoe-horn ERA into the U.S. Constitution. According to Section 3 of ERA: “This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.” January 27, 2022, is exactly two years after the Virginia legislature ratified ERA.

Two years makes a big difference because Virginia just elected a new legislature, a new governor, and a new attorney general who do not favor the earlier ratification and Virginia’s participation in the legal case Virginia v. Ferriero, which is also attempting to shoe-horn ERA into the U.S. Constitution. That lawsuit tried to force the U.S. archivist to recognize ERA as a legal amendment; the suit failed and is currently on appeal. The Department of Justice wrote a brief advising that to recognize ERA today, 43 years late, would be akin to today’s Congress overriding a veto done by President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s — in other words, moot or out of time.

ERA proponents now argue that the courts should just treat ERA as the law of the land. No can do. ERA failed to win approval by the required supermajority of Americans for multiple reasons. Many of the reasons that ERA was rejected in the 1970s may seem quaint today as the issues have changed, but ERA is a poorly-worded amendment. The biggest and most dangerous change is our understanding of what is the definition of “sex”. According to the proposed amendment: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” 

What is sex? “Sex” is not defined in the amendment and “sex” now has multiple new meanings. “Sex” is no longer a biological marker, but a social construct, an act, a weapon, an “assignment”, fluid, and a political cause. ERA is not about rights for women. The push for ERA today is a push for the elimination of any rights for women. If ERA were ever to be in our Constitution, women and girls would be erased and America would have no distinction — ever — on the basis of biological sex. In a sex-neutral society, the vulnerable women and girls are the ones who lose.

ERA supporter Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) summed up her position very well: “The constitutional protection of the ERA would enshrine gender equality across all aspects of American life, including protecting the right to abortion and expanding access to abortion care.”

I thank God that January 27, 2022, does not mark the implementation of ERA into the U.S. Constitution. But the fight is not over: Nevada has a 2022 referendum on the ballot for a state ERA. Let’s help Nevada to defeat their amendment that would harm females.