Audrey Muck

Please join us in welcoming our 2019 MOXIE Summer Interns!

Kate Jacqueline Shurtleff grew up in Morehead City, North Carolina and currently attends the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she majors in Communication and Women’s & Gender Studies. Upon graduating from UNC, she plans to attend law school and hopes to have a career in human or civil rights law. Through her work with the ERA-NC Alliance, she hopes to not only advance the ERA in the state of North Carolina, but also become more aware of the process of legal activism. Her goals for her participation in the program are to grow as a professional, become more comfortable and familiar with activism in the non-profit sector, and explore the possibility of the legal profession in such activism.

Ann-Marie Ingram is a rising senior at UNC-Chapel Hill and is originally from Statesville, NC. She will graduate from UNC in the Spring of 2020 with majors in Political Science and Public Policy as well as a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies. After college, Ann Marie hopes to work with organizations that recruit and support women in running for public political offices. She also takes a special interest in policies that protect and represent the interests of women. Thus, she hopes to learn more about the political processes that go into passing legislation in her work with the ERA-NC Alliance this summer. 

Our 2019 Moxie scholars will gain a better understanding of the legislative and social challenges with enacting laws to ensure equality for women.  They’ll be working on 4 projects this summer: 
1)  Increase membership in the ERA-NC Alliance among college-aged women and men.   
2)  Increase diversity:  Understand the needs of and engage with various communities with communication focused on how the ERA will benefit all. 
3)  Broaden political support across the spectrum for the Equal Rights Amendment. 
4)  Educate:  Part of their experience will be in assisting or preparing for education on the Equal Rights Amendment including displays, programs, written materials, website updates, etc.

The MOXIE Project is an academic and community engagement project through UNC Chapel Hill’s Carolina Women’s Center. Students take a hands-on approach to women’s activism through community organizations during these summer internships, and in the process develop their own sense of activism and community engagement.

Do you wonder how our ERA bills will move forward toward ratification here in North Carolina? Here’s a quick primer on the process and where things stand right now:

• Bill Introduced
  • Brief Window for Co-Sponsors Opens
• 1st Reading in each Chamber.
• Sent to Committee. Committee hearings are optional, but we hope the committees will choose to hold hearings and vote the bills out of committee and back to the full chamber. If no action is taken, the bill dies in committee. Click on the committee names below, where the ERA has typically been sent, to see who serves on each committee. While you’re there you can see what other bills have been assigned to the committee and subscribe to get email updates about committee actions.
  • House Judiciary Committee.
  • Senate Rules Committee; historically this is the committee bills have been sent to to die, but we have plenty of ERA friends on this committee, too!
• When a Committee approves a bill, it returns to the full chamber for 2nd Reading & Debate
• 3rd Reading & More Debate in Chamber
• Bill Moves to Other Body (repeat process)
• Other Body Approves Bill
• Bill is Ratified!

When an amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified by the NC General Assembly, it doesn’t require the Governor’s signature.

In the case of the Equal Rights Amendment, we also need action at the Federal level to lift the time limit unfortunately written into the preamble back in 1972 by North Carolina’s own Senator Sam Ervin. Currently there are bills in Congress to do just that. You can also read and track those online at Congress.gov; just type “Equal Rights Amendment” in the search box and it will bring up what bills are live in this Congressional session. There are bills to lift the time limit as well as bills to start the amendment process over from the beginning. The U.S. House of Representatives has repeatedly passed bills to lift the time limit, but the U.S. Senate continues to squash the sister bill.

ERA advocates have finally achieved the required ratification by 38 states when Virginia ratified on January 27, 2020. Lawsuits are pending by both pro- and anti-ERA forces. The ERA-NC Alliance has signed on to the ERA Coalition’s amici briefs.

We will continue to post updates and calls to action as events unfold! Sign up for our monthly news and action letter to stay up to date on developments.