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Showing Original Post only (View all)The Equal Rights Amendment May Pass Now. It's Only Been 96 Years. [View all]
Last edited Wed Nov 6, 2019, 05:32 PM - Edit history (1)
Source: New York Times
Of all the things that Virginia may pass now that Democrats have won control of the state legislature, none have been so long in the making as the Equal Rights Amendment.
First proposed almost a century ago and passed by Congress in 1972, the constitutional amendment -- whose main clause reads, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" ... In 2018, Illinois was the 37th. Now, Virginia's incoming Democratic leaders have promised to take up the amendment immediately when the legislature convenes in January -- and given that it failed in the Virginia Senate by only one vote when the body was under Republican control, passage is almost assured.
... nothing in Article V of the Constitution, which lays out the process for amendments, says ratification must happen within a certain period of time: After all, Congress approved the 27th Amendment in 1789, and the final state did not ratify it until 1992.
"We fully anticipate that there will be a Supreme Court decision involved in this," said Krista Niles, outreach and civic engagement director at the Alice Paul Institute, one of the main organizations promoting the Equal Rights Amendment. "Both sides of the argument have lawyers waiting to file their amicus briefs at any moment that the 38th state does ratify."
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/politics/virginia-ratify-equal-rights-amendment.html
The ERA is back! Thank you, Virginia!
NOTE: I've moved this OP over to General Discussion. Since it appeared from NYT online today, with a time stamp and byline, I took it to be news, though hosts might decide otherwise.
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