Equal Means Equal

EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENTS (PASSED 1972 BY CONGRESS) 

Section 1: 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 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

ERA TIMELINE: KEY DATES

1923: The Equal Rights Amendment was written by Alice Paul, woman suffrage leader and lawyer, and first introduced into Congress.

1923-1971: The ERA was introduced into every session of Congress but never passed.

1972-1977: The ERA was passed on March 22, 1972, by a two-thirds vote in the Senate and the House of Representatives and was sent to the states with a seven-year deadline for ratification. By 1977, it had received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications.

1978: Congress passed a bill extending the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982.

1978-1982: Organized political, economic, social, and religious opposition prevented any more state ratifications before the deadline.

1982-2016: The ERA has been introduced into every session of Congress since 1982, and ERA ratification bills have seen legislative activity in 9 of the 15 unratified states.

What the ERA Would Do

• Guarantee that the rights affirmed by the U.S. Constitution are held equally by all citizens without regard to sex;

• Provide a fundamental legal remedy against sex discrimination for both women and men;

• Clarify the legal status of sex discrimination for the courts, where decisions still deal inconsistently with such claims;

• Make “sex” a suspect classification, as race currently is, so that governmental actions that treat males or females differently as a class would have to bear a necessary relation to a compelling state interest in order to be upheld as constitutional.

Source: www.equalrightsamendment.org