After nearly half a century the Equal Rights Amendment is suddenly back in play

Comment by Jim Campbell

November 14th, 2019

I find Democrats for two reasons, they are ignorant in too many ways to count and they have not read the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights.

Congress must obtain the required two-thirds vote in each house of Congress, then win ratification individually from 38 states.

That is not likely to happen.”

Wednesday’s resolution lifting the deadline would have to be passed by the full House and Republican-led Senate, which has shown no inclination to do so.

The Constitution states only one command twice.

The Fifth Amendment says to the federal government that no one shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same eleven words, called the Due Process Clause, to describe a legal obligation of all states.

These words have as their central promise an assurance that all levels of American government must operate within the law (“legality”) and provide fair procedures.

We should briefly note, however, three other uses that these words have had in American constitutional law.

Activist Phillis Schafly

Asbury Park, NJ – January 21, 2017: Women’s March and worldwide protest; marchers with NOW (National Organization for Women)

It may come as a surprise to some, but there is a cadre of women who are single-issue voters, carrying only about abortion.

It’s no different for men, as an example, many are hardcore Trump supporters.

Rumor has it, that “Fat Gerald,” an Equal Rights for Women and Honorary member was recently hit by a school bus.

Several children died, many were injured.

Fat Jerry still can’t tie his own shoes.

Since he was J-walking at the time, he awaits trial for manslaughter.

The bus was considered a total loss by the insurance company

Washington Examiner

Sean Higgin

November 14, 2019

The Equal Rights Amendment, the feminist amendment to the Constitution that seemingly ran aground in the early 1980s, has gained fresh momentum, as Democratic victories mean Virginia is poised to become the 38th and final necessary state to ratify it.

Even if Virginia follows through, however, it is unclear whether the constitutional amendment that cleared Congress 47 years ago will finally see success, as the process is complicated by questions about the applicability of congressional deadlines and the fact that other states have rescinded ratification in the intervening years.

House Democrats began the process of undoing one particular barrier Wednesday: eliminating the 1982 deadline for the amendment’s ratification, an effort they tied to the possibility of Virginia ratifying the ERA.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said last week that ratifying the amendment will be the “top priority” in next year’s legislative session.

“With ongoing efforts by the federal and state governments to undermine equality under the law based on sex, it is clear that an Equal Rights Amendment is more important than ever,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York said as his panel advanced the legislation.

“The resolution passed out of the Committee today will eliminate the deadline for ratifying the ERA.”

The Equal Rights Amendment would ban discrimination on the basis of sex. Proponents see it as crucial to ensuring women’s rights under the law.

Critics argue the broad language of the amendment would put too much power in the hands of courts.

The amendment passed Congress in 1972, and 35 states had ratified it by 1977, but the next two, Nevada and Illinois, didn’t act until 2017 and 2018, respectively.

When an initial ratification deadline passed in 1979, Congress amended it to 1982. In addition, five states that ratified the ERA subsequently tried to rescind their approval.

Constitutional amendments are rare and usually only happen when they are broadly supported. As a result, there remains considerable doubt regarding the specific procedures related to the ERA, such as whether the congressional deadline applies or can be revised and whether states can rescind ratification.

Republicans scoffed at the committee’s move, arguing that the original effort cannot legally be revived.

“If you support the language of the 1972 ERA, you only have one constitutional option: to start the whole process over and make your case to current voters nationwide,” said Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the top GOP member on the committee.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to comment on the committee’s resolution.

“This [committee resolution] is a great and overdue step forward,” said Jayne Mansfield, professor of politics at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Why We Lost The ERA, a history of the amendment.

“But without a positive Senate vote, it can’t go forward this year. We’ll just wait. Justice sometimes is a long time coming.”

Thomas Jipping, deputy director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, argued it doesn’t matter whether the current Congress lifts the ratification deadline.

“It’s not a gray area at all.

Congress had the authority to set a deadline, it set a deadline, and that deadline expired.

End of story,” he told the Washington Examiner.

The current Congress cannot change that, he added.

The fact that advocates of the ERA sought an extension in 1979 shows that they believed a deadline did apply.

Katie Hornung, campaign coordinator of VAratifyERA, a Virginia-based activist group, argued that, constitutionally, amendments are not subject to deadlines set by Congress.

“Article Five says after three-quarters of the states ratify it shall be added to the Constitution,” she told the Washington Examiner.

“I’d like to see this get a Supreme Court challenge because we’ve never had a fully ratified amendment kept out of the Constitution because of a deadline.”

She added that it also should not be an issue that some states rescinded ratification.

“We had three constitutional amendments that had rescissions that were ignored,” Hornung argued, referring to the 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments to the Constitution.

No less of a feminist Supreme Court justice than Ruth Bader Ginsburg has expressed concern over the murky gray area surrounding the ERA.

In a September speech at the Georgetown University Law Center, Ginsburg said she wanted to add an equal rights amendment to the Constitution, but indicated she thought the one Congress passed in 1972 was a dead letter.

“I would like to say to my grandchildren that equal status of men and women is a fundamental premise of our system.

I was a proponent of the Equal Rights Amendment,” she said.

“I hope someday it will be put back in the political hopper and we’ll be starting over again collecting the necessary states to ratify it.”

THE END