With three days left in his presidency, Joe Biden’s declaration that the Equal Rights Amendment is ’the law of the land’ met with resistance.
President Joe Biden announced on Jan. 17 that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was first proposed more than a century ago, is now the “law of the land.”
The legal effect of Biden’s statement is disputed.
Biden said in a statement three days before his presidency ends that he has supported the ERA for more than 50 years and that “we as a nation, must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all.”
The president said the final hurdle to the formal adoption of the ERA as part of the U.S. Constitution was overcome in January 2020 when the Virginia General Assembly voted to ratify the amendment.
Because three-fourths of the states have ratified the ERA, “leading legal constitutional scholars [say] that the Equal Rights Amendment has become part of our Constitution,” Biden said without citing specific scholars.
“The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex,” he said.
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) promptly contradicted the president, saying Virginia’s ratification of the amendment was legally irrelevant because the congressionally imposed deadline for adoption of the ERA passed decades ago.
Article V of the Constitution provides that an amendment can move forward if it is approved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or by two-thirds of states participating in a special constitutional convention. For an amendment to become part of the Constitution, after approval by Congress or a special convention, it must then be ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.
What Is the Equal Rights Amendment?
The ERA was first proposed in 1923 in Congress, three years after the formal adoption of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. According to NARA, supporters said the ERA would bestow full equality on women by ending “the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters.”
Women have advanced in American society even though the ERA failed to become part of the Constitution, the agency said.
