Opinion: Equal Rights Amendment simple but not easy

Albert Einstein believed that everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Here’s a simple idea — and an old one: American women and men deserve equal rights under the Constitution. In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, who was participating in the Constitutional Convention: “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.” But John ignored Abigail’s plea and left women out of the U.S Constitution.

Amending the Constitution is pretty simple: Two-thirds of both houses of Congress propose an amendment, then three-fourths of the state legislatures need to ratify it. That’s it. No mention of a deadline. In fact, the 27th Amendment (dealing with congressional pay raises) proposed by Congress in 1789 specified no deadline. Over 200 years later, the state legislatures finally ratified it — a period considered “sufficiently contemporaneous.”

The Equal Rights Amendment has its own long, complex history. Introduced in 1923, passed by Congress in 1972, it then went to the states for ratification. However, some wily legislators had attached a seven-year deadline (later amended to 10 years). The time limit, passed by a joint resolution, appears only in the preamble, not in the ERA itself. Deadlines didn’t appear in amendments until the 20th century, beginning with Prohibition, and then they were included only sporadically.

Nevertheless, the ERA deadline became an issue, decades after the 1982 deadline, when the last three of the needed 38 states ratified the amendment in 2017, 2018, and 2020.

Women today face a significant gender pay gap, pregnancy discrimination, violence against women, loss of reproductive rights, discrimination in sports, and much more. Only a constitutional amendment can protect women and men from laws that discriminate on the basis of gender. Only a constitutional amendment can prevent legislators, the executive branch, or the courts from changing, diluting, or ignoring laws that are supposed to protect women from sex discrimination.

The U.S. House has twice passed bills to eliminate the time limit and to credit the three recent ratifications toward the required three-fourths. In the upper chamber, S.J.Res.1 garnered bipartisan support to lift the deadline, but the resolution is gathering dust in the Senate cloakroom. ERA advocates are now urging Senator Schumer to bring it to a floor vote.

President Biden has expressed his continuing strong support for the ERA and has declared that the only action needed now must come from Congress. The National Archivist refused to certify the ERA after ratification by the 38th state because of an order from the prior administration which prohibited his doing so. The Archivist has now retired, and a congressional battle may ensue when his replacement is nominated.

Meanwhile, the Attorneys General of ratified Nevada and Illinois filed a lawsuit, arguing that under Article V, a time limit in a congressional resolution cannot stand in the way of an amendment that has now been ratified by three-quarters of the states. Their suit languishes in an appeals court.

Section 3 of the ERA specifies that “this amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.” The idea was that the states would have two years to bring their laws into accordance with the ERA.

The last of the required 38 ratifications occurred on January 15, 2020. Two years later, a resolution was introduced in the House recognizing that the ERA has now met all legal requirements to be recognized as the 28th Amendment. The resolution has 133 cosponsors and continues to gain support.

Meanwhile, the prominent law firm Winston and Strawn is combing through laws on the books in North Carolina, Nevada, and other states, uncovering numerous laws that codify sex discrimination. State legislators must get busy bringing those laws into accord with the 28th Amendment, which should now legally be considered part of the Constitution.

The ERA-NC Alliance continues working for ratification. Even though the ERA is actually the 28th Amendment, it’s important for North Carolina’s legislature to sign on. It’s an embarrassment to our state that North Carolina did not ratify the 20th (suffrage) Amendment until 1971. This summer, we’ll conduct our biennial candidate survey to determine the ERA position of every legislative and congressional candidate in the general election.

Yes, it’s complicated. Now, in the final stretch, we are striving for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

Roberta Madden has worked nationally for the ERA for more than 50 years. She co-founded the ERA-NC Alliance and now serves on its board of directors.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Equal Rights Amendment simple but not easy