Today, Rep. Cindy Axne (IA-03) backed legislation aimed at ensuring constitutional equal rights for women by removing the time limit for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).
“I am proud to join my colleagues to affirm that women have been intentionally left out of the Constitution for far too long,” said Rep. Axne. “Suffragette Alice Paul first introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in 1923, and women are still waiting nearly 100 years later for equal protection under the law. Today, women are still paid less for our work, often overlooked for promotions, are less likely receive business loans and to own our own businesses. If the discrimination we’re still fighting hasn’t expired, then neither should our efforts to see the ERA added to the Constitution.”
Under Article V of the Constitution, an amendment to the Constitution needs to be proposed by two-thirds of the Congress and ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states.
In 1972, Congress advanced the ERA and set a seven-year time limit for the needed two-thirds (38) states to ratify the amendment. The time limit was extended by Congress to 1982, but elapsed with only 35 states having ratified the amendment.
In 2020, Virginia became the 38th and final state needed to ratify the ERA – following Nevada in 2017 and Illinois in 2018 – which would create additional legal avenues for people who face discrimination under the law on the basis of sex, and allow the Supreme Court to apply the highest of standards when reviewing sex discrimination cases. It would also give Congress the power to enforce that equality of rights under the law are not abridged by the United States or any state on the account of sex.
Congress has the authority to strike the time limit, just as it had the authority to extend the limit in 1979. Article V of the U.S. Constitution does not include time limits for the ratification process.
The State of Iowa ratified the ERA on March 24, 1972.
Original source can be found here.
