Bush, Pressley to launch Equal Rights Amendment caucus

Reps. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Ma.) are set to launch a new congressional caucus this week focused on enshrining the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“Exactly 100 years after the ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1923, the launch of this caucus serves to commemorate the centennial of the struggle for constitutional gender equality,” the lawmakers said in a news release. 

Bush and Pressley are set to host a press conference on Tuesday to formally introduce the new caucus. 

The Equal Rights Amendment Caucus will partner with advocates, activists, scholars, organizers, and public figures to establish a constitutional right to gender equality, and raise awareness around the issue.

House Democrats introduced a resolution last year to formally recognized the ERA as part of the Constitution. President Biden has also backed congressional action to pass the constitutional amendment.

In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, which marked the three-fourths threshold of states necessary to amend the Constitution.

However, the ERA was not enacted because Virginia’s action came almost 50 years after the proposed constitutional amendment cleared both chambers of Congress in 1972.

States were granted a seven-year deadline that year to ratify the ERA, which was later extended to 1982. But only 35 states had ratified the ERA by then.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), under former President Trump, issued an opinion through its Office of Legal Counsel that the ERA couldn’t be ratified because its deadline expired.

However, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel under Biden noted that decision “does not preclude the House or the Senate from taking further action regarding ratification of the ERA,” and Biden last year urged congress to “act immediately” on the amendment.

“We must recognize the clear will of the American people and definitively enshrine the principle of gender equality in the Constitution. It is long past time that we put all doubt to rest,” Biden said at the time.

Pressley and Bush, along with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), will speak on the House floor Monday about ERA and Black women’s contributions in drafting, advancing, ratifying state-level ERAs. 

After Tuesday’s press conference, Bush is expected to join Generation Ratify, a youth-led organization supporting the ERA, for a “civil disobedience action” in front of the National Archives Museum, according to the news release.