NO, THE ERA IS NOT PART OF OF THE CONSTITUTION. BUT WHY NOT?

 

No, the ERA is not part of the Constitution. But why not?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 24, 2025

 

. | Evan Vucci/AP

In his last few weeks of hyperactivity before leaving the White House, Joe Biden issued one particularly bizarre statement, declaring—in a post on X (Twitter)—that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is now the law of the land.

It isn’t, of course. The outgoing president’s declaration was one more indication of his addled thinking. But before this strange episode is forgotten, let’s reflect on a few important truths of American political experience which, to date, have not found their way into the history books.

When Biden issued his unilateral announcement, supporters of the ERA reacted with surprise, suggesting that the president’s statement “raised questions” about the legal standing of the proposed amendment. Not really. The ERA died in 1982, when a deadline fixed by Congress—and later extended for three years—passed, with the proposal still not ratified by the 38 states required for approval. The ERA now has no legal status whatsoever.

A sitting president cannot pass a constitutional amendment by himself, obviously. In fact the president has no legal role in the amendment process. The fact that Biden apparently thought he could change the Constitution with a social-media announcement suggests that a very tenuous grip on reality—and underlines questions about whether other officials in his administration failed to exercise their own duties under the 25th Amendment to certify the president as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” But that is a story for another day.

For today, the question I want to explore is why the ERA died back in the early 1980s, when the feminist movement was on the rise and the announced goal of the proposed amendment—to give women equal rights—was almost universally endorsed. Why was the ERA never ratified, even while the equality that it promised became ever more popular? Many books have been written on that question, but I can provide an answer in two words.

The ERA failed because of Phyllis Schlafly.

Approved by the House of Representatives in 1971 and the Senate in 1972, the ERA was winning ratification in one state after another when Phyllis Schlafly stepped into the fray. Harvard political scientist Jane Mansbridge would later write:

Many people who followed the struggle over the ERA believed—rightly in my view—that the Amendment would have been ratified by 1975 or 1976 had it not been for Phyllis Schlafly’s early and effective effort to organize potential opponents.

Who was Phyllis Schlafly? Young Americans—even young conservatives—may be unfamiliar with the name. But Schlafly had already been an influential conservative leader for years before the ERA fight showed her at her best. With no powerful political allies to back her, and against the relentless hostility of the major media, she rallied hundreds of thousands of women—mostly housewives like herself—to lobby their state legislators and stop the juggernaut.

During the ratification debate, Phyllis Schlafly herself was everywhere: writing op-ed pieces, making speeches, giving interviews, and debating the few feminists who were rash enough to match wits with her. But her efforts could not have been successful if she had not also displayed a remarkable knack for organizing: for finding and training and encouraging the cadres of like-minded women who took the fight to their local state legislatures.

While supporters insisted that the ERA would do nothing more than give women legal equality, Schlafly noticed the dangers of the proposal. She warned that the ratification of the ERA would make women subject to the military draft, endanger alimony, allow boys to play in girls’ athletic leagues and men to use the ladies’ restrooms. She warned that the ERA would pave the way for acceptance of same-sex unions. Sad to say, all of her predictions have come true, even without the constitutional amendment.

In her opposition to the ERA, Schlafly upheld (and helped hundreds of thousands of other American women to uphold) a different model of women’s rights. Unapologetically rejecting feminist ideology, she (and they) supported women who wanted to be treated differently, who wanted to be honored in their own homes and in their communities, who resisted mandatory inclusion in the masculine working world, who believed—as Schlafly famously and repeatedly said—that motherhood “is the most socially useful role of all.”

(It is not surprising, by the way, that Phyllis Schlafly was a devout Catholic, since her thoughts on the proper role of women so closely match the teachings of the Church. What is surprising is how little support she received, during her fight against the ERA, from Catholic institutions.)

Phyllis Schlafly was not the sort of “successful woman” that the feminist movement envisions. So she has not been listed routinely among the heroines that grade-school girls are encouraged to emulate. But by the time of her death in 2016, she had compiled an astonishing record of achievement.

Ask yourself: Who is the most influential woman in American political history? There is only one intelligent answer to that question. So why don’t young American women even know her name?

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/no-era-is-not-part-constitution-but-why-not/