Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate is set to vote on the Equal Rights Amendment during the week of April 23. The Equal Rights Amendment is a constitutional amendment that was introduced 100 years ago with the aim to guarantee equal legal rights for all Americans, regardless of sex.
“For women now, right across this great land, there’s a real worry that rights protected for decades will be taken away,” Schumer said on Monday, April 24. “We are in an ominous hour in American history.”
While speaking at Hunter College in New York, Schumer referenced the Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade last year as well as the efforts to restrict the abortion medication Mifepristone.
President Joe Biden has supported for the ERA, as have many others who are pro-choice, arguing that restricting abortion is discriminatory.
However, opposition to the amendment has also emerged, primarily from those who are pro-life.
For example, earlier this year, Catholic bishops of the United States urged senators not to pass the ERA, citing “its negative impacts to the common good and to religious freedom.”
The ERA was first introduced in 1923 but was not passed by Congress until 1972. Even then, 38 states needed to ratify the measure to amend the Constitution. That did not happen within the seven-year deadline imposed by Congress.
The deadline was then extended for another three years, and even then, supporters did not secure enough states to ratify the ERA.
In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, but it was too late. Under former President Trump, the Department of Justice issued a memo stating that the resolution had expired.
In 2021, a federal district judge declared that the efforts to pass the ERA had missed the deadline.
