Tomorrow, Virginia is expected to pass full floor votes on ERA bills in both chambers of the House and Senate – HJ1 and SJ1, respectively. The bills are then anticipated to favorably crossover chambers, thus successfully achieving the ratification of the ERA by the 38th and final state necessary! This will further push questions about Congressional and legal action into the national conversation. To watch history being made live: Virginia House Live Stream: https://virginiageneralassembly.gov/house/chamber/chamberstream.phpVirginia Senate Live Stream: http://virginia-senate.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=3
2020 is indeed the year of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in a historic mergence with the observance of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment declaring a woman’s right to vote.
As Virginia is expected to become the critical 38th state to ratify the ERA, we urgently move closer to the ERA becoming the 28th amendment to the US Constitution: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
But, you can bet there will be a 39th state, and a 40th, and a 41st state…
In fact, every remaining unratified state must step up and testify to the basic moral principle that no person in any corner of our country should ever have their rights compromised on account of sex.
North Carolina will lead this time and ratify too, not wait 50 more years and be almost dead last as it was with voting rights for women. Although women gained the vote in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment, North Carolina failed to do the right thing and didn’t ratify it until 1971, ahead only of Mississippi.
We will not stand for that.
Get ready to make history too, North Carolina. March for the ERA in your local Women’s Marches in January and help ratify the ERA in our state!
This bipartisan Senate measure will eliminate the deadline for ratification. A similar House resolution already has 224 cosponsors–more than enough to pass.
by Roberta Madden, published in the Asheville Citizen-Times, December 29, 2019
For the past five years,
North Carolina women have urged the General Assembly to ratify the
Equal Rights Amendment. The US Constitution requires three-fourths of
the states must ratify an amendment in order to put it into the
Constitution. That’s 38 states, and 37 have already done it.
Now it looks like our neighboring state will beat us to it. Virginia’s
recent legislative election opens the gate to ratification of the ERA,
which will guarantee constitutional equality for all women and men.
This past spring, by just one vote, the Virginia legislature failed to
ratify the amendment, whereupon women organized to elect strong
pro-ERA majorities in both chambers. Ratification is virtually certain
when legislators convene in January.
Why is this amendment so scary that it has taken decades to win approval by 38 states? The ERA simply reads: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” That’s language very similar to the suffrage amendment. How scary is that? [more….]
As Virginia nears ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, new cosponsors added to Senate resolution that would remove the deadline for ratificationWASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) announced Friday the addition of 16 cosponsors for the bipartisan resolution to remove the deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment (S. Res. 6). Thirty-seven states, of the 38 needed, have already ratified the amendment, which was first proposed in 1972. Earlier this month, the House Judiciary Committee marked up and reported favorably companion legislation, H.J. Res. 79. The full House could consider the resolution as early as December.
“There should never be a deadline on equality. This bipartisan legislation should resolve any ambiguity about states’ ability to ratify the ERA,” said Senator Cardin. “I thank my colleagues for joining this final push toward ratification and look forward to having more senators join this bipartisan effort soon.”The following senators join Senators Cardin, Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Angus King (I-Maine) as cosponsors of S. Res. 6:Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.)Senator Tim Kaine (Both D-Va.)Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.)Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.)Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.)Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.)Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.)
Article V of the Constitution contains no time limits for ratification of amendments, and the states finally ratified the Twenty-Seventh Amendment in 1992 regarding Congressional pay raises more than 200 years after Congress proposed it in 1789 as part of the original Bill of Rights. The ERA time limit was contained in a joint resolution – not the actual text of the amendment – and Congress has already once voted to extend the ERA ratification deadline.
Illinois was the last state to ratify the ERA in May 2018. Nevada ratified the ERA in March 2017. Only one more state is needed among: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, or Virginia. Virginia’s legislature is expected to take up the measure in January 2020.###
Passage of legislation in Virginia would mean 38 states have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, meeting the Constitutional requirement
Richmond, VA – Today, Senator Jennifer McClellan (D-Richmond) introduces legislation for the Commonwealth of Virginia to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution. If this bill is passed by the Senate and House of Delegates during the 2020 legislative session, Virginia will become the 38th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, giving the amendment the constitutionally-required ratification by three quarters of the states.
Sen. McClellan’s bill will parallel similar efforts by Sen. Mamie Locke (D-Hampton) and Democrats in the House to pass the ERA into law, a bill that in 2019 passed the Senate but failed to clear a GOP-controlled House subcommittee on a party-line vote.
“Virginia is ready to make history,” said Senator Jennifer McClellan. “It’s time to finally ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and bring our nation one step closer towards equality.
“I want my daughter and son – and every daughter and son in America – to grow up in a country where equal rights for women are enshrined in our Constitution,” McClellan said. “It will be poetic justice to pass this historic equal rights law in 2020, the year that marks the 100-year anniversary of the 19th amendment, which guarantees women’s suffrage.”
“The Virginia Senate has passed a resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment six times since 2011. We look forward to a seventh and final passage, followed by an epic celebration as the majority of American citizens will finally, specifically, have a promise of equality of rights under the law,” said Kati Hornung, Campaign Coordinator of VAratifyERA.
The ERA strengthens protections against discrimination on the basis of sex. Ratifying the ERA in Virginia paves the way for constitutional equality for all American citizens regardless of sex.
Chairman Nadler Announces Next Step in Effort to Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment
Washington, November 8, 2019
Washington, D.C. – Today, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced that the House Judiciary Committee would be marking up H.J.Res. 79 to eliminate the ratification deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). The markup, scheduled for Wednesday, November 13th, represents the next step to clear the path for ratifying the ERA and enshrining equality for both sexes into the U.S. Constitution. The markup follows Tuesday’s election results in Virginia, which changed the makeup of the state legislature and improved the prospects for Virginia to become the thirty-eighth and final state needed to ratify the amendment, meeting the 3/4 threshold for being adopted as a new amendment written into the Constitution. Passing H.J.Res. 79 would carve out a legal path for Virginia’s vote by eliminating a deadline set by Congress in 1972, which it extended in 1978″The ERA would affirm and strengthen the rights of women in our Constitution,” said Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY). “Congress created this deadline and, it is clear, Congress has every authority to remove it now. After decades of work by tireless advocates, it is time for Congress to act and clear the way for Virginia, or any other state, to finally ratify the ERA and for discrimination on the basis of sex to be forever barred by the Constitution.””I am honored and thrilled that the Judiciary Committee is marking up my resolution to facilitate the expeditious ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. This is a pivotal moment in our nation’s history and in the fight for equality. It’s a moment that will be recorded in the history books as a time when Chairman Nadler and our colleagues on the committee worked to protect and advance the rights of more than half of the citizenry and voted for women and girls to finally see themselves in our Constitution,” said Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), co-chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus.”The momentum to finally ratify the Equal Rights Amendment just keeps growing stronger,” said Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY). “I am thrilled the House is moving forward the resolution to eliminate the ratification deadline. After the amazing victories in Virginia to elect a pro-ERA majority in the state legislature, we have never been closer to enshrining women’s equality in our Constitution. Tireless advocates across the country have brought us to this point, and I am proud to support this important step in the House.””Everyone should be treated equally under the law, but the U.S. Constitution does not currently guarantee women the same rights and protections as men. I’m proud that Alaska was among the early adopters, having both ratified the Equal Rights Amendment and amended the State’s Constitution to prohibit discrimination in 1972. But for that to happen at a national level, we need one more state to ratify. There’s absolutely no reason to put a time-limit on the ability for that to happen,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). “Congress can and should amend the language to remove the deadline for ratification to ensure gender-based equality is not only supported across the U.S., but also legally recognized. I will continue my efforts, alongside Senator Cardin and so many of my colleagues, to ensure the Equal Rights Amendment is finally added to the Constitution.””We will ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The question is no longer if, but when. Most Americans are surprised to learn that the ERA is not already part of the U.S. Constitution, so it’s high time the Congress step up and help make that happen. Congress needs to voteon our resolutions to formally removedeadline for ratifying the ERA,” said Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD).A copy of H.J.Res. 79 can be found here.
BACKGROUND
On April 30, 2019, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held the first hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment in 36 years.
In January, U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced companion legislation, S. J. Res. 6, in the U.S. Senate.
Pictured at recent congressional hearing are Marena Groll (in green shirt), co-president of the ERA-NC Alliance; and other Alliance members.
Democrats aim to repeal an expired deadline on the measure to ensure equality of the sexes, clearing the way for Virginia — where they just won legislative control — to be the last state to ratify it.
Democrats, buoyed by their party’s electoral sweep in Virginia this week, plan on Friday to revive the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress, embarking on what they hope is a final push to add the nearly century-old measure to enshrine equality of the sexes into the Constitution.
Representative Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, will announce that his panel intends to mark up a bill eliminating the deadline for states to adopt the amendment, known as the E.R.A., which was one state short of the 38 needed for ratification when the deadline passed in 1982.
The aim is to clear the way for Virginia — where Democrats have just won control of the Legislature and are eager to approve the amendment — to become that final state. Although legal experts debate whether Congress’s deadline was ever constitutionally valid, and whether it can now remove that deadline, doing so would seem to help carve a legal path for the amendment to be written into the Constitution. But both the House and the Republican-led Senate would have to vote to do so.
“It is now highly likely that if we eliminate the deadline, Virginia will ratify and become the 38th state, and then the E.R.A. can go into effect as a constitutional amendment,” Mr. Nadler said in an interview Friday. “So it’s time to do it.”
First proposed by women’s suffragists in 1923 and adopted by Congress in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment, which would bar discrimination on the basis of sex, has for decades been a dream of women’s rights advocates. Its language is simple: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
Mr. Nadler’s move is part of a string of recent gains for the amendment’s backers, who struggled for years to get politicians of both parties to pay attention to their cause. Five years ago, they founded the E.R.A. Coalition, a nonpartisan umbrella organization for groups that favor seeing the amendment enacted.
Bettina Hager, the coalition’s chief operating officer, said that as recently as 2016, she “was practically begging” for Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, to talk about the amendment, but the Clinton campaign was unreceptive.
Now, Ms. Hager said, Democratic presidential candidates are not only mentioning the amendment, but competing to embrace it. Without her group’s prompting, Julián Castro raised the issue in a Democratic debate, and Senator Kamala Harris of California and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. quickly followed suit.
“Senator Harris said, ‘I’m going to pass the E.R.A. and I support this,’ and Vice President Biden said, ‘Hey, I’ve been working on that for decades,’” Ms. Hager said. “It was almost humorous to see them one-upping the other.”
While the House is likely to vote to eliminate the deadline, the measure’s prospects in the Senate are uncertain.
Senators Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, and Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, are co-sponsoring a companion measure to the House bill. And while Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has pronounced the Senate a graveyard for progressive legislation in the House, Republicans are also looking for ways to attract female voters.
And Republicans have a long history with the amendment. It was first incorporated into the Republican platform in 1940 — four years before it was added to the Democratic platform. It took three more decades for the E.R.A. to pass both the House and the Senate with the required two-thirds majority.
The measure was then sent to the states for ratification with a seven-year deadline. When that deadline passed in 1979, Congress extended it to 1982.
While women have made great strides in their push for equality since then, Mr. Nadler and other proponents say the amendment is necessary because of loopholes in other laws. While Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination against women in the workplace, it applies only to workplaces with 15 or more employees. While Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools, it only applies to schools that receive federal funding.
Fatima Goss Graves, the president of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, said the amendment was the next frontier for women’s rights, as millions of women were speaking out about their experiences with sexual violence through the #MeToo movement, and activists had mobilized against abortion restrictions and around efforts to close the wage gap between men and women.
“This is a movement in search of our collective right to be equal in this country,” Ms. Goss Graves said. “There is value in our foundational documents fully reflecting that equality.”
And Ms. Hager noted that while legislation can be rolled back, only one constitutional amendment — the one enacting prohibition — has been reversed.
“The most important part of the Equal Rights Amendment is that it is a statement of principle and permanence,” she said. “This is an incredible moment for us and for all women.”
Members of Congress and representatives of women’s groups hold a rally to mark the 40th anniversary of congressional passage of the Equal Rights Ammendment (ERA) outside the U.S. Capitol March 22, 2012 in Washington, DC. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), sponsor of H.J.Res.69, the current ERA; Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Rep. Hank Johnson, (D-GA), Feminist Majority President Ellie Smeal, National Organization for Women President Terry O’Neill, The Elizabeth Cady Stanton Trust President Coline Jenkins, National Council of Women’s Organizations’ ERA Task Force Chairwoman Bobbie Francis, American Association of University Women Public Policy Director Lisa Matz, Federally Employed Women representative Janet Kopenhaver
(CNN)The coming Democratic takeover of the Virginia legislature has cleared the path for the state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which would ban discrimination on the basis of sex and guarantee equality for women under the Constitution.Earlier this year, the state Senate voted to advance the ERA. But the bipartisan progress was halted in the House of Delegates, where Republican opponents blocked a full floor vote. The new Democratic legislative majority is poised now to finish the job — and make Virginia the critical 38th state to back the amendment.As they celebrated their sweep in Richmond, top Virginia Democrats promised the ERA would be a priority in 2020.
"Every constitution written since the end of World War II includes a provision that men and women are citizens of equal stature. Ours does not." ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.” ~ Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
