The Return of the Women’s Libbers

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Demonstrator holding 'ERA Now' sign | Sue Dorfman/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

I’m now in Phyllis Schlafly mode: Yesterday, a group of 120 Democrats sent a letter to President Joe Biden, who is apparently still kickin’, asking him “to take immediate action to recognize the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as the 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”

The ERA is a zombie that won’t die. First introduced 101 years ago, in the wake of suffragettes winning themselves and their peers the right to vote, the amendment was meant to eliminate laws that discriminate on the basis of sex. At the time, critics feared that this would winnow away certain protections available to women; The Washington Post notes, for example, that organized labor folks were worried that workplace protections which “capped the number of hours women could work, excluded them from certain occupations and imposed limits on heavy lifting” would be barred.

The amendment became a major issue in the 1970s, and the fault lines formed around many similar questions: Prominent hater Phyllis Schlafly, for example, led a campaign against the amendment, arguing it would make women subject to the draft, or bring an end to “dependent wife” Social Security benefits, or have judges no longer broadly favor the mother when adjudicating custody battles. “ERA was defeated when Schlafly turned it into a war among women over gender roles,” wrote the legal scholar Joan Williams in the ’90s. (“The women’s liberation movement really resents homemakers,” said one representative anti-ERA activist, per Williams. “They caused resentment to grow between homemakers and working women.”)

“There wasn’t momentum for it until the modern women’s rights movement, when both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly in favor of a slightly reworded Equal Rights Amendment in 1971 and 1972,” says the Post. “It then came up just short of the ratification threshold of passage by three-fourths of the states by the deadline set by Congress….The Texas legislature approved the amendment the same month it sailed through the Senate, and within a year, 30 states had ratified it.” But it needed to garner that high threshold of support by the deadline—38 states by 1982—and it ended up three states short, with five states even rescinding their approval in the end.

In the early years of Donald Trump’s adminstration, the ERA reemerged as an issue, with three states choosing to go ahead and ratify it, fearing what a Trump term might do for the rights of women.

Now it’s back again. “This action is essential as we prepare to transition to an administration that has been openly hostile to reproductive freedom, access to health care, and LGBTQIA+ rights,” write the group of Democrats. They’re urging Biden to consider his legacy, and how this would “establish an unambiguous guarantee that sex-based discrimination is unconstitutional” which would apparently be remembered as…highly important? Or something. It’s all a little odd, because the 14th Amendment is broadly considered to have already enshrined anti-discrimination protections into law. And because the original ERA appears to have expired, having failed to meet its 1982 deadline.

But in the letter to Biden, “the Democrats insist that because the ERA has met all the requirements for adoption outlined by the Constitution, the president must now issue a mandate for certification and publication to the National Archives and Records Administration to have the current archivist, Colleen Shogan, publish the amendment.” That is legally suspect, to say the least, and would probably trigger waves of lawsuits pointing out that the deadline has passed and that the five states that rescinded their support must be dealt with.

“I’m one to believe that we shouldn’t worry about what could happen if we do the right thing,” said Rep. Cori Bush (D–Mo.).

Scenes from New York: Starting January 5, you may be expected to pay a toll to enter certain parts of Manhattan as part of the city’s new congestion pricing scheme. Here’s how that works, and who is affected.

QUICK HITS

  • “Despite having installed a team of trusted acolytes, China’s most-important man has complained the party’s instructions are not being implemented on the ground. Officials are perceived as being either busy trying to advance their own interests, preoccupied with paperwork or too lazy to act,” reports Bloomberg. “As such, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong is deepening an anti-corruption campaign that he’s used to root out unscrupulous officials and eliminate political rivals since taking office in 2012. That drive has ensnared a record number of senior officials for two straight years, and set off a purge that’s still roiling the defense establishment.”
  • “Israel’s government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights,” reports the BBC. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a ‘new front’ had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance. Netanyahu said he wanted to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered illegally occupied under international law.”
  • I am not sure Whoopi Goldberg is very smart:

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