ERA: DoOver

[Dancing David]

As someone who supported the Equal Rights Amendmant in my youth I am appalled that my state has the gall to pass it now.
What happened to the Constitution? Are they just going to say "Do Over; no tag backs."

I can't believe that these people want to subvert the Constitution, the time to pass the amendment has passed you have to submit a new amendment.

Sheesh

 

[swellman]

Link please? Not familiar with the situation you describe.

 

[Tricky]

Link please? Not familiar with the situation you describe.

Here's one

 

[Dancing David]

Basically my state just passed the ERA and there are two more states that would need to pass it and then they want to grandmother it through Congress or some such. The time passed on the amendment like twenty years ago.

 

[swellman]

Thanks for posting the background info. At first glance, it seems like just another PR move designed to give some pols a chance to mug for the cameras.

But the article dates back to Feb. If the issue is still alive today, it's got more legs than a PR stunt.

A disturbing precedent if the constitutional amendment process can be reshaped whenever convenient.

 

[Luke T.]

I'm just a little bit steamed about the Equal Rights Amendment issue. The very first public speech I ever gave was before my state senate to rescind their ratification of it when I was 15 years old.

Tricky, the news item you linked is not entirely accurate in its reporting.

State Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, sponsored the ERA in the state House committee and said some of its opponents told the committee they feared its passage would encourage abortions that would require public funding, lead to the legalization of gay marriage, or could require the draft to include women.

There were many other reasons we were opposed to it. And my speech outlined that everything the feminists were saying the Amendment would provide them was already covered by federal law. I said that in the future, if the ERA passed, we could expect to see women in combat. I made no mention of the draft. And lookee here, even without the ERA, we have women in combat. But at the time, I was called a scare-monger and ridiculed for believing it would happen.

I also said the feminists would seek to ban single-sex organizations. I leave it to you guys to determine how right I was on that issue.

My parents were friends of the leading anti-ERA spokesman. And guess what, she was a female. Phyllis Schlafly.

REad a little more about the ERA problem here.

Note that 5 states have rescinded their ratifications of the ERA. So how is that going to work out?

There are precedents. How they apply to the ERA can be found here.

In 1978, Congress demonstrated its belief that it may alter a time limit in a proposing clause by extending the original ERA ratification deadline from March 1979 to June 1982. A challenge
to the extension’s constitutionality (Idaho v. Freeman, 1982) was dismissed by the Supreme Court as moot after the deadline expired, and no lower-court precedent stands.

Precedent regarding state rescissions of ratifications indicates that such actions are not valid.

In promulgating the 14th Amendment in 1868, Congress listed as ratifying states both states which had rescinded their ratifications and states which had first rejected and then ratified the
amendment.

Thus, under the principles of Dillon and Coleman, and considering that Congress voted to extend the ERA time limit and to accept the Madison Amendment’s 203-year ratification period as
“sufficiently contemporaneous,” the three-state strategy proposes that it is probable that Congress could choose to legislatively adjust or repeal ERA’s time limit constraint, determine whether or not state ratifications after the expiration of a time limit in a proposing clause are valid, and promulgate the ERA after the 38th state ratifies.

H.Res. 98 (Representative Robert Andrews, D-NJ, chief sponsor) in the 107th Congress promotes this strategy by stipulating that the House ofThe credibility of the three-state strategy was examined in a 1996 report from the Congressional Research Service, which concluded that acceptance of the Madison Amendment does in fact have implications for the premise that ratification of the ERA by three more states could allow Congress to declare ratification accomplished.

Despite Supreme Court rulings requiring a “sufficiently contemporaneous” time limit, the CRS analysis concluded that “Congress’ acceptance of the ratification of the 27th Amendment …appears to have disproved the assumption that, absent a deadline, an amendment ceases to be eligible
to be ratified merely because of the passage of time.” The three-state strategy expands on this concept to propose that amendments whose time limit is not in the text, such as the ERA, likewise remain viable for ratification indefinitely. While ERA opponents might argue that ratifications in 2001 or later could not be counted as contemporaneous with those from 1972–1982, the CRS report notes that “the acceptance of the Congressional Pay Amendment makes this argument much more difficult.”

By extending the original ERA deadline from 1979 to 1982, Congress has already shown that it claims authority to alter time limits placed in proposing, or resolving, clauses. In light of that
action, the CRS memorandum poses a key question: “Does this mean this (or another) Congress has the authority to recognize state ratifications of the ERA that may be received in the future, even though the deadlines have passed?”