Commentary: Biden must not finalize the Equal Rights Amendment
As the Biden administration wraps up its work, a New York senator is asking the president to attack the rule of law and the Constitution.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is leading the charge to have President Joe Biden, in the last month of his presidency, certify that the Equal Rights Amendment has been ratified as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The ERA passed each house of Congress in the early 1970s with the constitutionally required two-thirds majorities. This satisfied the Constitution’s first step in the process of adopting amendments. But the second step in this process — ratification by three-fourths of the states — was not achieved within the time permitted by Congress.
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Initially, Congress gave the states seven years to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Within two years of the ERA being sent to the states in 1972, a majority of states approved the amendment. In the........
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