Why has the Equal Rights Amendment taken 100 years to pass?
Yet here we are in 2021, and the ERA remains trapped in legislative suspended animation. So, what’s happened over the ensuing decades? And why has this seemingly innocuous amendment been mired in bureaucratic red tape?
One reason is that amending the Constitution is hard. And rightfully so. You don’t have to be a constitutional scholar to know that changing our country’s governing framework should only be done with overwhelming and sustained support. The ramifications are too great given the nature of our constantly evolving sentiments on consequential issues.
The resolution for an amendment must pass the House and the Senate with a two-thirds majority. Three-fourths of the states (38 of 50) must then vote to approve the amendment with a timeframe in mind. Only after that laborious process can an amendment finally be ratified.
But, back to the ERA. Isn’t its blanket statement of equality straightforward enough to clear such a high bar?
The short answer is: no. After the ERA was drafted in 1923, opposition swelled from northern Democrats and pro-labor union groups. Their primary argument was that it would jeopardize labor laws in place, allowing special provisions for women in the workforce.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Coalition of the 1930s and 1940s, including Eleanor Roosevelt, also opposed the ERA. How come? Because they viewed opposition as a strategy to maintain strong ties with labor unions that made up a significant portion of the Coalition.
By the 1970s, experts and activists debunked many of the labor unions’ arguments. With support from a bipartisan Congress, the ERA passed on March 22, 1972.
But the ERA would not be ratified by the 38 states needed as new opposition rose in the form of conservatives and the religious right. Through a concerted effort — that continues today — anti-ERA forces have concentrated on a range of wedge-issues like women serving in the military, gay marriage, and gender identity. As the time lapsed for ratification, the ERA was once again relegated to the dustbin of Congress.
Since then, many of those same conservative boogeymen have passed and are now federal law. Despite the ERA not being among them, 94% of Americans support it.
With new life breathed into the ERA and three additional state legislatures (Illinois, Nevada, and Virginia) supporting ratification, the House passed a resolution last month to extend the timeframe. What does this mean? After almost 100 years of waiting, the ERA has its best chance of finally being ratified.
But, there’s a larger lesson to be learned from the odyssey of the ERA: having a politically opportunistic ulterior motive, appeasing a minority base for political expediency, or just plain inaction and stagnation grinds the wheels of progress to a screeching halt.
Some unsolicited advice for Congress? A bipartisan culture can exist in politics. A bipartisan culture that confronts deep-rooted issues and crafts meaningful legislation in less than 100 years.
