The Women’s Law Project proudly joined an amicus curiae brief calling for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. The brief was filed by Winston & Strawn and signed by more than 50 organizations devoted to women’s equality and gender justice.
The ERA satisfied all constitutional requirements for adoption in January 2020 when Virginia became the thirty-eighth state to ratify. The amicus brief argues that an arbitrary seven-year time frame imposed by Congress in 1972 should not stand in the way of adoption as it does not – and cannot – alter the provisions of the Constitution that govern amendments.
Winston’s team was led by Linda Coberly, the firm’s Chicago Office Managing Partner, Chair of its Appellate & Critical Motions Practice, and Chair of the ERA Coalition’s Legal Task Force.
As we explained in a recently published op-ed co-authored with Drexel law professor David S. Cohen, the ERA is not a magic bullet but would add a useful tool to a limited toolbox in the fight for sex equality in the United States.
From the brief, which you can read in its entirety here:
Despite the long history of discrimination, women today serve with tremendous distinction in the C-suite, on the floor of Congress, on the soccer field, on the presidential debate stage, and even in combat.
Women also make up the overwhelming majority of health-care workers on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19.
Yet women still face persistent inequality in nearly every sphere. Women are consistently underrepresented in positions of power and overrepresented among those living in poverty. Women are still paid only 81 cents on average—and far less than 81 cents for women of color—for every dollar paid to men, and women face an ongoing epidemic of domestic and sexual violence.
The persistent inequities are particularly acute for Black women, Latina women, indigenous and Native American women, immigrants, lesbians, trans women, women with disabilities, and single mothers.
These struggles continue to fuel the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, which declares, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Basic sex equality is not historically a partisan issue. The ERA was first adopted by the Republican Party’s platform in 1940; Democrats followed suit in 1944. A new ERA has been introduced in Congress every year since 1983.
Today, three years away from the century mark since the ERA was first introduced, it’s clear we have regressed. We still don’t have sex equality by nearly every measure, and yet the Trump Administration is actively fighting the effort to enshrine basic sex equality into the Constitution by blocking the ERA.
That is, perhaps, evidence enough of how badly we need it.
The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond.
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