The ERA was Re-introduced in the Senate for Ratification Yesterday

[niyad]

The ERA was Re-introduced in the Senate for Ratification Yesterday




Just in time for Mother’s Day, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) re-introduced yesterday a joint resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S Constitution. S.J. Res. 15 was introduced with 26 original cosponsors including Senator Mark Kirk (R-Il). The resolution would remove the deadline set by congress for ratification of the ERA. U.S. Representative Jackie Speier is expected to introduce an ERA resolution in the House.



The ERA originally passed congress in 1972. Like every proposed constitution amendment, after it passed by a two-thirds vote of both the House and Senate, the ERA was sent to the states for ratification. Congress, however, had imposed – in the preamble of the ERA – a seven-year deadline on the ratification process. That deadline was eventually extended to June 30, 1982. Thirty eight states must ratify an amendment before it can become part of the U.S. Constitution. Thirty five states ratified the ERA by the 1982 deadline.

If the deadline is lifted, only three more states would need to ratify the amendment. This is called the “three-state” strategy. As part of the strategy, ERA activists in unratified states are working to clear a path for the ERA. The Illinois State Senate passed the ERA in 2014 with a strong 39-11 vote, and in February 2015, the Virginia State Senate – which never took a floor vote on the ERA during the campaign in the 1970s and 1980s – voted to pass the ERA for the fourth time since 2011.

“As America prepares to celebrate Mother’s Day, we should be working to ensure that all women realize the promise of equal protection under the law. We cannot allow an arbitrary deadline to stand in the way of equal rights for our mothers and daughters, wives and sisters, aunts and grandmothers,” said Senator Cardin.

The ERA states: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

. . . .

http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/05/08/the-era-was-re-introduced-in-the-senate-for-ratification-yesterday/

[shenmue]

1. Ye-es!

[niyad]

2. one of these days, women will matter!

[Novara]

3. It would be nice if the fucking media would report on this....

....so that people in those states could lobby their congresspersons. I haven't heard a peep about this. Shit, even the damn media treats us like second class citizens.

[niyad]

4. you are wrong--the media treats us as if we are not even human.

[brer cat]

5. Sadly, I agree. nt

[Jim Lane]

6. The proponents need to do a better job of explaining the need for the ERA

From the linked article:

As Gaylynn Burroughs, the Director of Policy and Research of the Feminist Majority Foundation, explained in the Winter 2015 issue of Ms. magazine, The need for the ERA has only increased since 1972. “Women have made numerous gains over the past four decades from Title IX to the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to pay equity to the Violence Against Women Act and much more.” She continued, “But all the federal legislative gains are just that – legislative. They can be wiped out by a hostile Congress or Supreme Court, or chipped away slowly and insidiously.” Burroughs cites last year’s Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision as one example of recent rollbacks.

The problem is that not a single one of those legislative/judicial actions would be prohibited by the ERA. Instead of a catalog of current feminist concerns, they need to narrow their focus to ones that would be affected by ratification. For example, the Pregnancy Discrimination Act relates to denial of equality by private employers. It could be repealed the day after the ERA is ratified.

And, no, government inaction in the face of private discrimination does not constitute denial of equal rights or equal protection. That's why, even after Brown v. Board of Education (1956) held that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause, it was still not unconstitutional for private employers to discriminate. That's why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was still needed.

[Novara]

7. Ah, but it's a much harder climb for legislatures and courts to fuck with women's rights.

Congress has the power to make laws that replace existing laws — and to do so by a simple majority. Therefore, many of the current legal protections against sex discrimination can be removed by the margin of a single vote. While courts in the near term would still apply skeptical scrutiny to laws that differentiate on the basis of sex, that precedent could be undermined or eventually ignored by future conservative or reactionary courts. With a specific constitutional guarantee of equal rights through the Equal Rights Amendment, it would be much harder for legislators and courts to reverse our progress in eliminating sex discrimination.

And:

Without the ERA in the Constitution, the statutes and case law that have produced major advances in women's rights since the middle of the last century are vulnerable to being ignored, weakened, or reversed. By a simple majority, Congress can amend or repeal anti-discrimination laws, the Administration can negligently enforce such laws, and the Supreme Court can use the intermediate standard of review to permit certain regressive forms of sex discrimination.

This is exactly what we're seeing now. In addition:

The Court now applies heightened (so-called "skeptical&quot scrutiny in cases of sex discrimination and requires extremely persuasive evidence to uphold a government action that differentiates on the basis of sex. However, such claims can still be evaluated under an intermediate standard of review, which requires only that such classifications must substantially advance an important governmental objective (rather than bear a necessary relation to a compelling state interest, as strict scrutiny requires).

The ERA would require courts to go beyond the current application of the 14th Amendment by adding sex to the list of suspect classifications protected by the highest level of strict judicial review.

In an interview reported in the January 2011 California Lawyer, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated his belief that the Constitution does not protect against sex discrimination. This remark, which provoked widespread public reaction, has been cited as clear evidence of the need for an Equal Rights Amendment in order to guarantee that all judges, regardless of their judicial or political philosophy, apply the Constitution to prohibit sex discrimination.

The Equal Rights Amendment

[Jim Lane]

8. I don't see how it would be "a much harder climb" with the ERA

The first two passages you quote ignore the distinction between public and private action. If the ERA is ratified and there is thereafter a legislative majority to repeal the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, or even to remove sex discrimination from the scope of the Civil Rights Act, those bills could still pass and would still be constitutional, despite the ERA. The ERA, at least in the version sent to the states in 1972, would not outlaw private sex discrimination and would not require the government to act against it.

The third passage you quote states what I think is the consensus view of lawyers and academics who've studied the issue: Enactment of the ERA would mean that sex-based discrimination would have to be subjected to strict scrutiny. The question is whether any actual cases would come out differently. For example, United States v. Virginia was the 1996 decision in which the Supreme Court held that the state of Virginia had violated the Equal Protection Clause by setting up Virginia Military Institute and restricting admission to men. Twenty years earlier, when the ERA was being debated, I don't think anyone foresaw that the Equal Protection Clause would be interpreted that broadly. In that respect, the ERA is arguably similar to the Child Labor Amendment, which is still pending before the states 90 years after Congress ratified it. It became unnecessary because of changing judicial interpretations -- it's now generally agreed that laws prohibiting child labor don't violate the Constitution.

If the only argument for the ERA is that a future Court might accept the radical views of Scalia, that's not a fallacious argument, but it's a little weak. Scalia, who was the lone dissenter in United States v. Virginia, is something of an outlier. The argument for the ERA would be stronger if proponents identified specific judicial decisions that are currently in effect and that would come out differently following ratification.

[niyad]

9. . . .