Political Pistachio

By Douglas V. Gibbs

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was proposed in 1972.  Like Affirmative Action, it would have encouraged quotas, which Americans and most of the State Legislatures were against during its ride toward potential ratification.  Like most of the modern amendment proposals, the ERA had a limit placed on it of seven years.  When in 1979 the amendment had not quite reached the three-quarters State approval needed for ratification, an amendment to the amendment was proposed and approved to extend the deadline three more years.  However, by 1982 the amendment still had failed to secure enough ratification votes and the ERA went down in history as yet another failed amendment to the Constitution.  In 1992 the Twenty-Seventh Amendment, which was one of the original twelve Bill of Rights amendments was ratified, but the difference was that the Twenty-Seventh Amendment had no expiration date on it when it was proposed.

President Biden has decided that the Equal Rights Amendment is now a part of the Supreme Law of the Land, declaring on X that “The Constitution has a 28th amendment, and women’s rights have been enshrined across the country.”

He claimed such because in 2017 Nevada decided to ratify the ERA, then Illinois in 2018, and finally Virginia in 2020.  The threshold of 38 States (three-quarters) had finally been met, thought Biden.  Except that the expiration date was 1982, and even if the expiration was not a reason to stop the whole thing, several states had voted to withdraw their ratification since then, anyways.

ERA advocates have argued the time limit was unconstitutional, and have lobbied Congress to rescind the deadline.  They have even urged the archivist of the United States—the official charged with formally certifying and publishing amendments—to add the ERA to the Constitution on their own, regardless of the expiration date, congressional refusal to help them, and the courts failing to rule in their favor.

All of their efforts have failed.

Even Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a staunch supporter of the ERA and a rabid feminist until the day she died, opposed the effort to resurrect the ERA, saying in 2020 that advocates needed “to start over” because the deadline had elapsed.  In 2021, the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution to repeal the deadline, but it never cleared the Senate.  And, the federal archivist office has issued a statement that they can not legally publish the ERA, citing “established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.”

Enter, stage left, President Joseph Biden; confused, leftwing, and easily manipulated.  The ERA backers, sensing weakness in the political waters of his waning days, urged Biden to simply instruct the archivist to publish it anyway.  Biden, believing he has kingly powers, ignored the fact that there is nothing in the United States Constitution granting to the President any role in the amendment process.  Granted, he didn’t say anything about talking to the archivist or officially publishing the ERA; he simply declared on social media that the ERA was law — a move that shares the same kind of legal powers that his executive orders have — meaning, there is none.  His declaration has neither force nor effect, and his declaration nor any judicial ruling or judicial opinion changes the fact that the ERA was not ratified, and will remain in its grave unless its advocates are ever able to clone and start the whole process all over again.

Biden’s declaration, of course, won praise from the anti-Constitution Democrats who seem to always get excited when one of their own lashes out in a lawless manner.  Hillary Clinton, after feeding her flying monkeys, said she was “thrilled.”  The Wizard was unavailable for comment.

In the end, it is all theatrics during the final days of a failed presidency.  Even the “fact checkers” decided Biden had nothing, providing a community note to his X post, “There is no 28th Amendment.”

The whole thing, to be honest, was no surprise.  I am never surprised when the Democrats prove that they don’t understand the Constitution, and are more than happy to try to usurp it, or proclaim it says things that it doesn’t.  As usual, in the end, the leftwing Democrats came up empty, and embarrassed.

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