Georgia National Organization for Women Statement on the Anniversary of the Introduction of the Equal Rights Amendment

Authored by Anna Chimo

Supported — - President Triana Arnold James

December 2023

“Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex” — section 1 of the currently unpublished 28th Amendment of the US Constitution. On December 10, 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman was introduced to Congress by Senator Curtis of Kansas. Three years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote.

The National Woman’s Party sponsored the bill and continued grassroots activism across the Country to ensure it would one day become law. Ultimately unsuccessful they laid the groundwork necessary for Representative Martha Griffiths to reintroduce the bill to Congress in 1971. Finally being approved by the US House of Representatives on October 12, 1971, and by the US Senate on March 22, 1972. Sending the ERA to the state legislatures for ratification.

By 1977 35 of the 38 necessary States had ratified the amendment. Due to a sunset date in the preamble the amendment stalled in the early eighties. Thirty years later, coinciding with a new wave of feminism, the ERA was once again brought into focus. Nevada was the 36th State to ratify, in 2017. Illinois followed in 2018 and finally Virginia in 2020. Bringing total ratifications to 38, the number provided by Article V of the US Constitution. There are several organizations like the National Organization for Women and others that continue the fight for ratification in the remaining 12 States, Georgia among them.

The publication of the ERA should have happened two years after the 38th State ratified, which would have been on January 27, 2022. That day came, and 154 cosponsors introduced a resolution before the US House affirming that the Equal Rights Amendment has been validly ratified and is now in effect as the 28th Amendment to the US Constitution. It included the language “No time limit exists within the text of the proposed amendment that was ratified by three-fourths of the states.” Nevertheless, the archivist did not publish. There are varying opinions, including over 200 constitutional law scholars who agree that the Executive branch may not stop a ratified amendment from being published.

It has been almost 2 years since the ERA should have been published as the 28th Amendment of the US Constitution. It has been over 50 years since the ERA left Congress on the road to ratification. It has been 100 years since Alice Paul and the National Woman’s Party asserted that women should be equal with men. Please join Georgia National Organization for Women in the continued effort to enshrine that assertion in our Constitution.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Rights_Amendment

https://www.eracoalition.org/

www.georgia-now.org