46 senators call on Biden to certify Equal Rights Amendment as GOP control looms

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03 December 2024

By Patty Mooney - https://www.flickr.com/photos/cleopatra69/27189181990/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92764408

Emphasizing that the Equal Rights Amendment is the only proposed constitutional amendment that has yet to be certified, 46 U.S. senators have joined the growing national call for President Joe Biden to ensure the proposed statute is part of the Constitution when he leaves office in January.

Reporting on the letter on Tuesday, the Virginia-based publication Style Weekly noted that the state's two Democratic senators—Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine—joined almost the entire Democratic caucus in sending the letter to Biden on November 22. Independent Sens. Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont signed the letter, but Sen. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), who also caucuses with the Democrats, did not.

The ERA was passed by Congress in 1972, and was immediately ratified by 35 states. It took nearly five decades for the amendment to be ratified by three-fourths of U.S. state legislatures, with Virginia becoming the 38th state to ratify it in 2020.

Despite the amendment meeting the ratification requirements, Biden has yet to direct the national archivist, Colleen Shogan, to certify the ERA and publish it in the Federal Register, which would formally cement it as part of the U.S. Constitution.

Once published, the amendment would guarantee legal equality between men and women, and reproductive rights advocates have said it could be invoked by judges to overturn anti-abortion rights laws that have been passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country—an urgent issue as President-elect Donald Trump's second term in office with a GOP-controlled Congress draws near.

"As you are keenly aware," wrote the senators, "after nearly 50 years under the protections of Roe, more than half of all Americans have seen their rights come under attack, with access to abortion care and lifesaving healthcare varying from state to state. A federal solution is needed, and the ERA is the strongest tool to ensure equality and protect these rights for everyone. It would establish the premise that sex-based distinctions in access to reproductive care are unconstitutional, and therefore that abortion bans—which single out women for unfair denial of medical treatment based on sex—violate a constitutional right to sex equality."

The senators noted that state-level equal rights amendments have already been used in Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Nevada to protect against "legislative infringements on women's reproductive freedom."

The letter was reported ahead of a virtual town hall scheduled for Tuesday at 7:00 pm ET, when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is scheduled to speak about the ERA.

The town hall was organized by the Biden Publish the ERA Alliance, which consists of 20 non-partisan advocacy groups including Doctors for America, Free Speech for People, and the League of Women Voters.

Organizers are also planning rallies in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday and next week.

Kati Hornung, co-founder of Vote Equality U.S. and a leader in the grassroots effort that pushed Virginia to ratify the ERA, told Style Weekly that Biden "campaigned on fixing our constitutional gender equality gap and his campaign even requested to speak at a VAratifyERA event in 2019."

"He is running out of time to tell the national archivist, Colleen Shogan, to do her job," she said. "One hundred seventy million women and girls have been waiting 101 years for this amendment to be added and with the increased threats to our LGBTQIA+ family and friends, there is no excuse for leaving us all unprotected."

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