BY OLIVER C. HAUG | As the end of the year and the end of Congress’s lame duck session approaches, congressional leaders and women’s rights advocates are calling on the Senate to vote to list the time limit in the preamble of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), thus officially recognizing the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The ERA has met the only two requirements set out in the Constitution for Amendments: adoption by two-thirds of Congress (in 1972), and ratification by three-quarters (or 38) of the states.
Along with Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), women’s rights leaders and other members of Congress gathered at the House Triangle in Washington, D.C., on Thursday morning to call on the Senate to vote on S.J. Res 1. If passed, the resolution would remove the deadline to ratify the ERA, and clear the way for its final inclusion in the Constitution.
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. “And as we 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, like [many other] countries of the world.”
The House had previously passed H.J. Res. 17 to remove the arbitrary time limit on the amendment’s ratification in March of last year, with bipartisan support. The Senate resolution also has support on both sides of the aisle, though a vote on the floor has yet to be scheduled.
(Click here to read more)
