The Equal Rights Amendment, which was introduced nearly 100 years ago, became enforceable as the 28th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on Thursday, Jan. 27. The amendment, passed in January 2020 when Virginia became the final state to ratify, gave federal and state governments exactly two years to bring their statutes into alignment.
Equal rights advocates and state legislators put the North Carolina General Assembly on notice Thursday that most state statutes need review under the newly enforceable 28th Amendment/ERA.
At a press conference, Rep. Julie von Haefen and Sen. Natalie Murdock, along with attorneys and equal rights activists, demonstrated the magnitude of the 28th Amendment’s impact with boxes representing the 45,000 pages of statutes that will need to be addressed. Only 2,000 pages of the total 47,000 were free from gender references.
Seventy attorneys from prominent international law firm Winston & Strawn have volunteered more than 800 hours so far to comb through North Carolina’s statutes. The law firm will eventually turn the project over to the North Carolina Bar Association to make recommendations to the NCGA.
“Since the ERA has met all constitutional requirements for an amendment and knowing our North Carolina General Statutes will need to be revised to comply with the ERA, we took the opportunity to review all 47,000 pages to identify where revisions will need to be made and to propose revisions,” Managing Partner Danielle Williams said. “Winston & Strawn is proud to volunteer for this role and to serve North Carolina and its citizens so we can move forward with the ERA.”
Celebrations are taking place nationwide Thursday, including a rally at the White House, a march in Washington, D.C., and a slumber party outside the U.S. Department of Justice.
“The ERA, as the 28th Amendment, will fulfill the promise of a more perfect union by finally giving all its citizens full legal equality under the U.S. Constitution,” said Lori Bunton, co-president of the ERA-NC Alliance. “The ERA will become the fabric of our democracy, just as religious liberty, free speech and due process are. It will ensure that our legal equality cannot be stripped away by hostile legislators.”
Work remains to be done. North Carolina has yet to ratify the ERA, a move that could position the state as a leader in women’s equality. North Carolina failed to ratify the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, until 1971 — five decades after it was part of the Constitution.
National Archivist David Ferriero has refused to publish the 28th Amendment in the Federal Register, basing his decision on a memo from the Trump administration’s Office of Legal Counsel. A lawsuit by the attorneys general of Nevada, Illinois and Virginia demanding that he publish is ongoing in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit.
“The Biden administration has an opportunity to play a part in affirming, once and for all, that women should be guaranteed equal rights regardless of sex,” von Haefen said. “President Biden must instruct his Office of Legal Counsel to take up the case for publishing the ERA. The 166 million women living in the U.S., including 5.4 million North Carolinians, deserve to celebrate their newly guaranteed right to equality.”
Published or not, the ERA-NC Alliance contends — as do preeminent constitutional scholars — that the ERA is the 28th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to issue a resolution on Thursday agreeing with that stance.
“As a granddaughter of a North Carolina woman who gave birth to 13 daughters, I watched my aunts marry, raise families, work, grow old and die, without full protection under the U.S. Constitution or North Carolina laws,” said Jimmie Cochran Pratt, co-president of the ERA-NC Alliance. “No more. January 27, 2022, marks the ERA as the 28th Amendment of the Constitution. The time has arrived.”
“The passage of the Equal Rights Amendment is critical because conservative lawmakers keep finding new ways to use American laws to shackle the sovereign will of women to gender discrimination and inequality,” said Murdock. “These lawmakers hold moral attitudes that say a woman is a second-class citizen who should be grateful for the crumbs of opportunity they are given. As a lawmaker and woman, I will not settle for what the great Shirley Chisholm described as the countless ambiguities and inconsistencies in our legal system that exclude women. North Carolina must still ratify the ERA to ensure that women’s liberation and equal protection are guaranteed, or else the cycle of women’s oppression will never end.”
Watch the press conference livestream on our Facebook page or YouTube channel.
An updated pocket Constitution has been published by VoteEquality in partnership with the ERA Project of Columbia University. You can read the advance copy online.
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