The Senate will vote this week on a measure that would seek to remove a barrier to enshrining the Equal Rights Amendment in the US Constitution, more than half a century after Congress overwhelmingly approved the proposed amendment, the Senate leader said. Senate majority Chuck Schumer, D-NY ., said Monday.
The Equal Rights Amendment, passed by Congress in 1972, would outlaw discrimination based on sex, explicitly saying in the country’s founding document that women are equal to men. In a statement Monday, Schumer argued that the amendment has become increasingly relevant as American women face an «uncertain future» after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and the recent battles over medical abortion.
«At this sinister hour in American history, the Equal Rights Amendment has never been more necessary and urgent than it is today,» Schumer saying.
“It has been exactly 100 years since the first ERA was proposed in Congress,” he added. «American women cannot afford to wait 100 more.»
The Equal Rights Amendment was written by suffragette Alice Paul and introduced in Congress in 1923. Congress approved the amendment in 1972, starting the clock at a seven-year timeframe for states to ratify the proposed amendment. Congress later extended the deadline to 1982, but the deadline came and went without enough states ratifying the amendment.
In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, reaching the three-quarters majority needed for a constitutional amendment. But a federal judge later ruled that the move came too late for the amendment to become part of the Constitution. Former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice also saying that the time period had expired and that Congress would need to reapprove the amendment and send it to the states for their consideration.
This week’s Senate vote would consider a bipartisan resolution drafted by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to scrap the 1982 deadline.
In 2021, the House narrowly passed a resolution to scrap the 1982 deadline, with just four Republicans voting in favor of the measure. At the time, Cardin and Murkowski’s partner’s resolution stalled after presentation in the evenly split Senate.
As the earlier legal battle over the amendment raged, abortion rights advocates argued that the amendment would strengthen abortion rights and require judges to counteract anti-abortion laws. But votes on abortion-related measures have been met with staunch Republican opposition, which is likely to be the case on this week’s resolution vote.