Posted on 02/13/2020 2:06:07 PM PST by fwdude
The U.S. House has voted to remove the deadline on ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in an attempt to revive the amendment. The 232-183 vote fell largely along party lines with five Republicans supporting the measure and zero Democrats opposing it.
Changing the deadline is a key part of one route that some ERA proponents believe would lead to the amendment becoming a part of the Constitution, but the path forward is uncertain.
The proposed amendment says simply, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex," and it has had a renaissance in recent years, with three states ratifying it since 2017.
However, the bill may well be stymied after this vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Just a pathetic exercise in virtue signaling.
BS agenda to harm more than it’s portrayed to help.
They have nothing else to campaign on
The only way to revive the ERA is to start all over again -- and the votes aren't there for that.
Yep, but no. You have to start from the beginning.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
Of course they forgot to address the issue of five states withdrawing their support for the Amendment.
This slow train to oblivion is headed for a washed out trestle just fast enough to ensure it goes over the edge.
Good riddance.
Let’s hope the good Senate Lollipop can shoot this down, without touchy feely Republicons coming to it’s rescue.
Why do I get the disconcerting feeling this is going to become law,... just because? If it does, it will not have fulfilled the requirements to have done so.
SCOTUS next stop?
It’s expired....period.
What they are hoping to do is get an activist leftist federal district judge to deem the deadline “extended” and then order the official records to show the amendment passed, giving them possession. it will be a lot harder to wrest it away from them once it’s “official,” even if temporarily.
Doesn’t the Civil Rights of 1964 cover all the bases? What does this ERA act do that the 1964 one doesn’t??
Are women going to give up their 10% to 30% advantage in college admissions?
If it is so important, why didn’t they do it during the Obozo Administration when they had BOTH the House and Senate?...................
I would also guess that any amending of requirements would also require 2/3rds vote of both chambers of Congress, if that were even a possibility.
I share your disconcerting feeling. We are no longer governed by the rule of law, but by men.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a law, but not an Constitutional Amendment.
ERA advocates believe the amendment would be more permanent than that.
(that’s what they claim, anyway)
The 18th (Prohibition) Amendment was the first amendment to have a seven-year ratification window attached to both the amendment itself and the joint resolution of Congress passing it to the states for ratification by state legislatures. This was challenged in federal court in the case of Dillon v. Gloss, which reached the Supreme Court in 1921. The Court declared that Congress has wide latitude in regulating the amendatory process providing that such regulation does not contravene the explicit language and intent of Article V of the Constitution. Since then Congress has attached seven-year ratification windows to every amendment proposal it has passed to the states for ratification.
The ERA was sent to the states for ratification in March 1972 with a seven-year ratification window in the joint resolution. By 1979 not enough states had ratified to meet the three fourths bar, and several states had rescinded their ratifications, an act known as retrocession, or rescission as the shortened legal term. Congress reset the ratification window to March 1982, but there was a problem.
Congress used the legislative process, not the amendatory process, to do this. The legislative process requires only a simple majority in the House and Senate and a presidential signature. The amendatory process requires a two thirds vote in the House and Senate, and the president is not a participant. President Carter had misgivings about the constitutionality of what Congress had done, but he signed it anyway and decided to let the courts hash it out.
The National Organization of Women took issue with Idaho’s rescission and took it to federal court in the case of NOW v. Idaho. The federal district court issued a dual ruling:
This decision was appealed to the federal circuit court, which declined to hear the case. The Supreme Court received the case after the March 1982 window had closed, declared the case to be moot and refused to grant cert, i.e. to hear the case.
The only way to revive the ERA would be to start the process all over again and get two thirds of both Houses of Congress to send it to the states for ratification. The recent ratifications of three states are null and void, and thus they are no more than virtue signaling.
The Justice Department issued a ruling stating that the ratification window closed in March 1982 – which was an error. It actually closed in March 1979 as decreed by the federal court in Idaho. The department ordered the Archivist of the United States not to count the three recent ratifications.
One attempt to get around this was to file a suit in federal court ripping the ratification window from the ERA and opening it up for further ratifications. Legal experts understood that such a suit would fail. Federal courts do not like to tamper with settled law, especially something basic like the Dillon decision that affects process. Only the Supreme Court itself could change Dillon, and that would throw the entire amendatory process into chaos. While the Left enjoys chaos, the courts do not. Let’s analyze this.
Bottom line: The ERA is dead, and nothing Congress or the courts can do will bring it back. Only by starting all over again can a new ERA be submitted by Congress to the states for ratification. And the votes aren't there.
Passing bills by the Dims is most often creating new talking points in the election cycle, not really governing, when so often the bill they want is DOA in the Senate or at the WH.
The could devote their energies to something that has a real bipartisan chance of becoming law, but that would deny who they are.
Sorry, Dims, but that attempt at amending the Constitution is dead. If you want it, you have to start again and get the same level of vote again. You cannot amend an amendment with just a statutory law. Doesn’t work even before passage. BZZZZZT!
Either 2/3 of both houses, and re-ratification by 3/4 of the states, or GTFO.
This is blatantly unconstitutional, as if that mattered to these fudge packing communists.
Future newscast: “We’re in the year 2525, and the Democrats have voted to extend the deadline for the 200th time.”
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