This is a nice thing to have for three days. Enjoy your Equality Weekend, ladies!
— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek.bsky.social) January 17, 2025 at 10:15 AM
… Which, of course, we almost certainly can’t — not given the incoming maladministration, and America’s long history of general and specific misogyny. But I do appreciate the gesture, even while wishing President Biden had done this even a few weeks sooner.
President Biden: "Today, I affirm the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all the necessary hurdles to be added to the U.S. Constitution, now! The Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land, now! It's the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, now!" pic.twitter.com/7MiztbKVRv
— CSPAN (@cspan) January 17, 2025
I have supported the Equal Rights Amendment for more than 50 years and have long been clear that no one should be discriminated against based on their sex.
We must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 17, 2025
Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — “Biden Says ERA Is Ratified, But Supreme Court Gets Final Say”:
In one of those why the hell not? gestures open to a president down to his last weekend in office, Joe Biden declared the Equal Rights Amendment ratified and thus the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. A host of feminists and Democratic politicians have been urging this step from the moment Biden took office, based on three recent state ratifications (Nevada in 2017, Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020) executed in defiance of a 1982 congressional deadline that ERA proponents failed to meet (35 of the 38 required ratifications had happened by then). Indeed, the House formally repealed the ratification deadline in 2021 and dismissed as legally ineffectual actions by five conservative state legislatures to rescind prior ratifications. But the Senate never acted, leaving the whole question in legal limbo.
From a technical point of view, the national archivist has the power to recognize ratified constitutional amendments by officially publishing them, and Biden urged this obscure official to do that with the ERA. But in December, anticipating this action, the archivist denied she had the power to do so. She cited prior legal precedents suggesting the 1982 deadline was indeed valid, not to mention ongoing litigation over the Virginia ratification…
While there have already been rallies at the National Archives to dramatize the issue, there’s every indication that the whole controversy will wind up at the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority is not terribly likely to redeem the decadeslong push for an ERA. But Biden’s action will revive the topic and all the underlying issues of long-postponed equality until such time as the Supreme Court acts.
Saturday Morning Open Thread: Our 28th Amendment, If We Can Keep ItPost + Comments (283)
