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ERA News
Sen. Thom Tillis
Sen. Ted BuddAction Alert: Sign4ERA Petition
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the year Alice Paul first introduced the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in Seneca Falls seeking to codify the prohibition of sex-based discrimination in the United States Constitution. For a century lawmakers, activists and grassroots organizers have been fighting to pass the ERA and we have never been closer. While the ERA has fulfilled all Article Five requirements, the last hurdle is removing an arbitrary deadline placed upon its ratification when it successfully passed Congress in 1972.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to bring the ERA up for a vote on the Senate floor this week.
A petition drive, Sign4ERA, just launched today to raise the groundswell of support we need to push the ERA over this last hurdle.
Please sign the petition, and call in your friends and family to sign, too!
The more signatures, the better – it will show that equality of rights under the law is the will of the American people. The ERA is the most permanent protection possible, safe from the whims of anti-choice, anti-women, anti-equality courts and politicians. Only the ERA will provide the constitutional basis to stop the attacks on abortion and birth control. The ERA would enable passage of stronger laws for survivors of gender-based violence to hold their abusers accountable. And the ERA is essential for achieving economic equality for women.
In the days ahead we’ll keep you posted with progress reports, action alerts and other steps you can take to put the ERA in the Constitution. But right now:
We don’t have a moment to lose. Now is the time we must count on each other. Now is the time to act.
Bills Introduced at NCGA to Ratify ERA
ERA, that crazy notion of women’s equality,
is officially 100 years old
Raleigh — Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman wrote the Equal Rights Amendment a century ago: “Equal rights, under the law, shall not be denied or abridged, by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
The requisite 38 states have ratified the ERA but you will not find North Carolina on that list.
Yet.
Today, on International Women’s Day, Rep. Julie von Haefen and Sen. Natalie Murdock held a press conference announcing two new bills that will put North Carolina firmly on record as supporters of equal rights under the law for all its citizens.
Visit the ERA-NC Alliance YouTube channel or Facebook page
to watch the press conference.
Press Release: New NC Ratification Bill
For immediate release
ERA, that crazy notion of women’s equality,
is officially 100 years old
Raleigh — Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman wrote the Equal Rights Amendment a century ago: “Equal rights, under the law, shall not be denied or abridged, by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
The requisite 38 states have ratified the ERA but you will not find North Carolina on that list.
Yet.
At 10 a.m. on March 8, International Women’s Day, Rep. Julie von Haefen and Sen. Natalie Murdock will hold a press conference announcing two new bills that will put North Carolina firmly on record as supporters of equal rights under the law for all its citizens. The press conference will be held at the N.C. General Assembly, 16 W. Jones St., Raleigh.
Tens of millions of Americans have assumed that the land of “liberty and justice for all” naturally included women. It does not.
2022 Candidate Surveys
Every two years, the ERA-NC Alliance reaches out to EVERY North Carolina candidate running for Congress and the General Assembly to determine their support for the Equal Rights Amendment. We send out letters with postage-paid return postcards to each candidate, and follow up with phone calls as much as possible.
A ‘yes’ means the candidate will co-sponsor and vote for the resolution to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Many candidates also returned comments with their survey.
SCOTUS decimates women’s rights
Supreme Court decimates women’s rights in Roe decision
Equal Rights Amendment will save women’s lives
The ERA-NC Alliance and its partners are outraged that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing states to determine that most fundamental human right of bodily autonomy. Roe has always been the floor, not the ceiling, for a woman’s right to control her body, decide the size of her family and determine her future.
Removing this final federal protection of minimal abortion access will be devastating for millions of Americans, not just women. Every abortion restriction chips away or outright eradicates that basic human right — whether or not to bear a child. And we know with this decision that 26 states are set to restrict or ban abortion through trigger laws and other legislation. (See Guttmacher Institute.)
Therefore, publication and enforcement of the Equal Rights Amendment is literally a matter of life and death for women in America. Without the legal equality guaranteed by the 28th Amendment, hostile legislators will continue to not only overturn reproductive rights, but gut other laws that have brought women the current degree of equality we have. That is why in May the Alliance filed a brief in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, demanding that the Supreme Court use the ERA as the basis for its Roe decision. The court did not respond.
Justice Samuel Alito had the audacity to write that “no one, as far as we are aware, argues that the laws they enacted against abortion in the early 19th century …violated a fundamental right.” Women had no fundamental rights in the early 19th century, not even a vote.
Women have been denied autonomy over their bodies, indeed their own lives, for centuries. It has only been in the last 50-plus years that women have been able to serve on juries, get credit, apply for and get most jobs, earn a living wage and control when and if they have children. And that has been due, in part, to Roe v. Wade.
As the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “The argument … whether or not to bear a child … is something central to a woman’s life, to her dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. And when the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choices.”
Our founding mothers of the Equal Rights Amendment knew 100 years ago that women must have full constitutional equality because of unequal and unjust laws that impact mothers and potential mothers.
Abortion is the battle. Equality of rights is the war.
Signed,
ERA-NC Alliance
League of Women Voters of North Carolina
American Association of University Women NC
North Carolina National Organization for Women (NOW)
Business & Professional Women NC
WomenNC
Ratify ERA-NC
Charlotte Women’s Movement
YWCA of Asheville
Women’s Forum of North Carolina
NC Women United
Women AdvaNCe
SCOTUS: follow the ERA in Dobbs
To save reproductive rights, ERA-NC Alliance demands SCOTUS follow the
Equal Rights Amendment/28th Amendment in Dobbs decision
Court motions filed in Supreme Court today
Raleigh — In a Supreme Court filing on Monday, the ERA-NC Alliance argued that the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is wrongly decided because it fails to consider the 28th Amendment/Equal Rights Amendment, which was added to the U.S. Constitution in January 2020 and became effective Jan. 27, 2022.
“We are stunned that the Court did not consider the most important language in the Constitution, the actual text of the ERA,” Lori Bunton, co-president of the Alliance, said. “We knew that we had to do something to alert the Supreme Court and try to stop this travesty before the Dobbs opinion is issued.”
“Women are going to lose their lives if the Supreme Court refuses to protect our rights to make our own reproductive decisions,” said Jimmie Cochran Pratt, also co-president. “We have learned that not only abortion will be banned, but it’s also likely birth control and the abortion pill. Even people who have ectopic pregnancies could die without the right to have those fetuses safely removed.”
The ERA-NC Alliance asked the court to allow it to file an amicus brief regarding the Equal Rights Amendment and for a time extension in light of the recently leaked Supreme Court draft majority opinion in Dobbs, which uses Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban to decimate women’s reproductive rights and to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The Alliance argues that Justice Samuel Alito, who positions himself as one of at least five textualists on the Supreme Court, relied on archaic legal theories that predated the U.S. Constitution, in order to justify his draft opinion.
The ERA was fully ratified on Jan. 27, 2020, but former President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr blocked the National Archivist from completing his mandatory duty, which requires the Archivist to certify the 38 states’ ratifications.
ERA-NC Alliance’s motions set out that since Section 3 of the 28th Amendment had a two-year delay for it to become effective, it just became effective on Jan. 27, 2022, after the deadlines for filing briefs in the case and after the December oral arguments.
“If these five Justices claim they are textualists, then they need to follow the text of all the Constitution, including the 28th Amendment, which by its plain language, ‘Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex,’ ensures that abortion and other reproductive rights are protected, because Mississippi doesn’t have a law interfering with men’s reproductive rights. There is no Mississippi law making men or boys get vasectomies,” said Arlaine Rockey, an attorney for the Alliance.
“The ERA requires that the courts apply strict scrutiny to prevent the discrimination of women in the Dobbs case,” said Alliance co-counsel Gina Collias. “The intent and requirement of the ERA is to make sure that women are equal citizens, so the ERA implies that women have a fundamental right to reproductive choice.”
“President Biden has a Constitutional duty to make sure that laws are faithfully carried out, according to Article II, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution,” said Rockey. “The Constitution is the highest law in our country, so the President has a duty to direct the Archivist to certify and publish the ERA immediately. He promised women in his campaign that he would enshrine women’s equality in the Constitution, yet he has failed to follow through. With just one signature, he could make women equal citizens for the first time in hundreds of years.”
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ERA-NC Alliance is a statewide North Carolina 501(c)(4) organization that advocates for the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by North Carolina and working in collaboration with the national organizations and individuals in reaching this goal. The Alliance is comprised of respected women’s organizations including National Organization for Women NC, American Association of University Women NC and the North Carolina League of Women Voters.
See most recent articles regarding purported ERA deadline and rescinding states, and why the ERA provides a fundamental right to reproductive choice at https://ArlaineRockey.com/
Action: Rescind Barr Memo
Urge the Office of Legal Counsel to rescind Barr memo to Archivist
Take action! The ERA-NC Alliance urges everyone to immediately ask Christopher Schroeder, left, the newly appointed Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Office of Legal Counsel, to rescind the 2020 memo to the National Archivist. That memo, sent during U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr’s tenure, effectively stopped National Archivist David Ferriero from publishing the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The ERA met all constitutional requirements when Virginia became the 38th and final state needed to ratify on January 27, 2020.
Silent Sentinels
Several members of the ERA-NC Alliance attended the ongoing protest at the U.S. Department of Justice to encourage Attorney General Merrick Garland to remove former AG Bill Barr’s memo blocking the national archivist from publishing the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Here are a few photos from our days standing sentinel at the DOJ:
Press Release: ERA Sentinals
ERA-NC Alliance to stand vigil June 29-30 in D.C.
to protest AG Garland’s inaction on women’s rights
Washington, D.C. — Frustrated by Attorney General Merrick Garland and President Joe Biden’s inaction on the long-awaited Equal Rights Amendment, members of the ERA-NC Alliance will stand vigil June 29 and 30 as Silent Sentinels outside the Department of Justice in protest. National organizers Equal Means Equal, which began the vigil June 10, have vowed to continue until Garland and Biden act on the ERA. Advocates nationwide have joined the vigil.
Garland has failed to order National Archivist David Ferriero to accept Virginia’s ratification of the ERA and to publish the ERA as the 28th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.