Dear John,
As Congress begins to wrap up this session, women’s rights advocates are pushing for a vote in the Senate to remove the time limit in the preamble of the Equal Rights Amendment, thus clearing the way for the ERA to become the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The House has twice voted to remove the time limit (which Constitutional law scholars have said is non-binding), but the Senate has yet to even schedule a vote.
On Thursday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) who has been one of the key leaders for the ERA in the House, gathered on the Capitol grounds with other members of Congress and prominent women’s rights advocates, to urge Senate Majority Leader Schumer to schedule a vote before the end of this session.
Rep. Maloney emphasized President Biden’s support for the ERA, and his request that Congress act on it. “[The ERA] would empower Congress to better enforce laws protecting women,” Maloney said. “[W]e see the constant effort to whittle away at rights for women, everything from choice, they are bulldozing our rights into the ground. [The ERA] would place gender equality in the Constitution.”
“I’m pissed off that we have to be convened for this,” exclaimed Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO). “Because the question is… I think about Sojourner Truth: ‘Ain’t I a woman?’ Why is it that I, as a Black woman—and I’m speaking as a Black woman—why am I not granted the same rights as a white man under our Constitution?"
With next year marking 100 years since the ERA’s initial proposal in Congress, speaker after speaker emphasized that the Amendment is more important than ever—particularly in the face of escalating attacks on women’s rights from the Supreme Court.
“The ERA is needed more than ever after the Dobbs decision,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority and long-time leader in the fight for the ERA. “The Dobbs decision not only takes away abortion rights, but we believe one by one, they’re going to come after other rights.”
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) sounded a similar warning: “It is unconscionable that in 2022, we still have not achieved equal rights under the law as women. It is even more unconscionable that there is a Republican party that wants to send women further back by decades. They are working at every turn, to make sure that they strip women of their freedoms, their rights and their opportunities.”
This is urgent. If the Senate recesses without even attempting a vote, feminists will have to start over again in the next Congress to remove the arbitrary timeline, this time with a hostile Republican-controlled House. How long must we wait?
Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-GA) re-election victory earlier this week for a full term means the Democrats will finally have a clear majority in the next session, compared to an evenly divided chamber. With their majority, it will be easier to advance legislation or nominees to the full Senate for a vote, as well as committees will now have subpoena power. This will remain true despite Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s announcement on Friday that she has left the Democratic party and will be registered as an Independent—Sinema has said that she will not caucus with the Republicans. And Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said she will keep her committee assignments and indicated her decision will not alter the Senate’s working structure.
This week saw final passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, which finally repeals the Defense of Marriage Act (that had defined marriage as between a man and a woman) and takes steps towards safeguarding same-sex marriage as well as interracial marriage. While the RFMA is far from perfect, it is a move in the right direction when it comes to protecting the civil rights under threat in the wake of this past Summer’s Dobbs ruling. It now awaits Biden's signature.
Finally, we celebrate the news this week that WNBA star Brittney Griner, who has been unjustly held in Russia’s prison system since February, has finally been released and returned to the U.S.—thanks in no small part to the unrelenting grassroots activism of Black women activists, the players of the WNBA, and Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner.
While I’m no sports aficionado, I think that makes it a “slam dunk” ending to the week!
Onward to equality!
