Two Democratic lawmakers are taking a novel legal path to attempt to add the 100-year-old Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution.
Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) Thursday unveiled a measure intended to ensure that equal rights regardless of sex are guaranteed and durable in the United States.
The joint resolution argues that the ERA has met all the ratification requirements to become the 28th amendment to the Constitution, including being ratified by Congress and a majority of states, and simply needs to be certified by Colleen Shogan, the first female archivist in the country.
“We need her to do her job, the job of the people,” Bush said. “The job of more than 50 percent of the folks in this county. It can be done today when it should have been done yesterday.”
“This resolution has been over 100 years in the making,” Gillibrand said during a press briefing announcing the effort called ERA Now, which she is spearheading alongside Bush in the House.
“We’re making clear that the Equal Rights Amendment has been properly ratified,” said the senator from New York.
Gillibrand, who said the Court “abandoned” almost five decades of precedent by overturning Roe last year, was joined by Bush and other Democratic members of Congress and civil rights activists during their afternoon conference.
“Equality is wildly popular,” said Bush. “Equality is so popular today that more than 85 percent of Americans across all parties support having a gender provision in the Constitution.”
“The only way to defeat it is by dirty tricks and procedural hurdles,” she added. “We can’t let paperwork keep us out of the U.S. Constitution.”
There is plenty of support for providing full legal protection for Americans under the ERA, but the nature of the debate, like the majority of social and cultural issues, is inherently political.
The ERA was proposed in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972. In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, but it did so after a 1982 deadline had passed.
Senate Republicans earlier this year blocked an effort to remove that deadline and allow the ERA to be added to the Constitution.
While Democrats control the Senate, they didn’t have — and are not likely to get — enough votes to get to the 60 needed for legislation to clear the filibuster, which has been a point of frustration for the party since President Biden won control of the White House and upper chamber.
Gillibrand and Bush have been outspoken about gender and equality-related issues during their time on Capitol Hill. Gillibrand has been a vocal defender of women’s rights, including working for over a decade to pursue more legal accountability when handling cases of sexual assault in the military, and she has been at the forefront of the #MeToo movement in Washington.
Bush, a progressive and member of the Squad, has also been a crusader of gender equality, having recently co-created a special caucus with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) dedicated to the ERA itself.
“We are left out of the very Constitution we are sworn to protect,” Bush said. “We protect it, but it doesn’t protect us. So let’s change that.”
Pressley, another staunch equality proponent, said women and minorities have endured a “second-class status” that has plagued them for a century. “We have soldiered on as a movement for 100 years,” she said. “Constitutional equality is powerful and equality is long overdue.”
“The ERA has satisfied all criteria in the Constitution to be added,” she said, calling out LBGTQ and trans individuals as examples of people whose rights have not been protected. “The attacks against us are layered. As a Black woman, all my life I’ve had to fight.”
The Democrats in Congress are hoping to gather momentum as they resist what they see as constant attempts to roll back or chip away at rights nationwide. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and with it 50 years of abortion protections, Republicans in red states have significantly curbed access to women’s health care, including critical access to reproductive care.
The decision left abortion up to individual states to decide their laws around the practice, which has led to an outcry from Democrats and efforts to find new ways to protect access.
“It’s time we finish this century-long job,” Pressley said.