By Roxy Szal and Oliver C. Haug
The Senate on Thursday had its first vote on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 40 years.
Republican opposition meant that S.J. Res. 4, which would declare the ERA ratified and valid, failed to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to bring it to the floor for debate and a vote. Polls that show 83 percent of Americans believe the ERA should be incorporated into the U.S. Constitution (including 90 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds).
S.J. Res. 4 would declare the ERA, “which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, was ratified by three-fourths of the states, and is therefore a valid constitutional amendment, regardless of any time limit that was in the original proposal.” (The ERA has satisfied all Article V requirements to amend the Constitution: a two-thirds vote in the House and the Senate, achieved in 1971 and 1972, and ratification by three-fourths of the states, after Virginia became the 38th and final state in January of 2020.)…
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