Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said a vote on a resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment will happen this week — 100 years after the measure was introduced in Congress.
“We are here to stand united, and inch by inch restore, fight for, and expand women’s rights so that the women of today and the generations of tomorrow will not know a future with less access than their mothers had,” Schumer said in a statement.
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“The ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment would finally provide a constitutional remedy against sex discrimination — pushing our country one step closer to finally achieving equal justice under the law,” he added. “It has been exactly 100 years since the first ERA was proposed in Congress. American women cannot afford to wait 100 more.”
The ERA passed in 1972, and it was sent to the states with a seven-year ratification deadline in place. Amendments become part of the Constitution after being ratified by a minimum of 38 states. Only 35 states had ratified by 1979, and the deadline was pushed to 1982. However, no new states ratified the ERA during the extension.
Decades after the deadline had passed, states began moving toward ratification. Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the ERA in 2017. It was followed by Illinois in 2018, and most recently, Virginia ratified it in 2020.
Earlier this year, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan resolution to advance the ratification of the ERA and remove the deadline set nearly 50 years ago. In late February, the Senate held its first hearing on the ERA in 40 years.
“Here we are, a century after its first introduction,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) said in the hearing. “It’s time to get the job done. In fact, it’s long overdue.”
Julie Suk, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, told the Washington Examiner that there has been an understanding by Congress and the courts that under Article 5 of the Constitution, Congress has the power to impose a time limit on ratification for at least 100 years.
“But because that power is pursuant to Congress’s power to pretty much run the amendment process, it means that Congress can impose a deadline, change a deadline and remove a deadline,” Suk said. “Or another way of putting it is that the power that Congress has in Article 5 entails the possibility of forgiving any late ratifications since Congress was the one that put that time limit in the first place; the Constitution does not require any particular time limits on ratification.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) strongly opposed the amendment during the initial hearing. He said it would “lead to chaos.”
“The people who are pushing politically to pass this are hanging their hat on if it became law, every pro-life measure in this country would fall,” Graham said. “So if there is a law in a state, pick a state, that says a biological male cannot compete against females, would that law be subject to being struck down if the ERA was passed?”
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Supporters from the Republican Party include a co-sponsor of the resolution, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Murkowski has said the ERA would set into the law guaranteed equal treatment for women.
“We know that things have improved over the years, but we still have a long ways to go when it comes to achieving equality for women, and I think we need the Equal Rights Amendment to get there,” Murkowski said in her testimony on Feb. 28.
