Removing Deadline for Ratification of Equal Rights Amendment
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 844, I call up the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 79) removing the deadline for the ratification of the equal rights amendment, and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.
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Mr. NADLER. Res. 79.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, this is long-overdue legislation to ensure that the equal rights amendment can finally become the 28th amendment to the United States Constitution.
This year, we will celebrate the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Despite the century that has elapsed, our Constitution still does not recognize or guarantee full equal protection of the law for women and gender minorities, but H.J. Res. 79 would bring us one step closer.
The resolution removes the previous deadline Congress set for ratifying the ERA and will, therefore, ensure that recent ratifications by Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia are given full effect.
The ERA offers a basic and fundamental guarantee: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
That is it. Very simple.
In the years since it was passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in the House and the Senate, we have made great strides to secure that equality, including through existing case law decided under the 14th Amendment.
The ERA would enshrine those principles and take the final critical step of ensuring that laws disadvantaging women and gender minorities are subject to the most rigorous form of constitutional scrutiny.
In recent years, we have seen a series of breakthroughs for women's rights and gender equality. We have seen millions of women march in support of their rights and dignity as equal citizens. Through the #MeToo movement, we have had long-overdue and sometimes painful conversations about the violence and harassment that women and gender minorities experience, whether in the workplace, at home, or in schools and universities.
We have seen women get elected to Congress in record numbers. And just weeks ago, Virginia became the necessary 38th and the last necessary State to ratify the equal rights amendment. We are on the brink of making history, and no deadline should stand in the way.
The Constitution itself places no deadlines on the process for ratifying constitutional amendments, making it doubtful whether Congress had the authority to impose such a deadline in the first place. But if it had such authority, then Congress clearly also has the authority to remove any deadline that it previously chose to set.
I want to thank Representative Jackie Speier for introducing this resolution, which takes that important step. This resolution will ensure, at long last, the equal rights amendment, having been proposed by Congress years ago, having now been ratified by three-quarters of the States, can take its rightful place as part of our Nation's Constitution.
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Mr. NADLER. I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Speier), the chief sponsor of this bill.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, again, the deadline was not part of the amendment. It was a resolution by Congress. And if Congress can set a deadline, it can remove a deadline.
I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader of the House.
(Mr. HOYER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I thank all of the women of America. I thank the sponsor of this bill. I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the ranking member for being on the floor. I thank him.
I ask the question: Does anybody see the sense of women not being in the most powerful document of laws and power of the American people?
Let us be reminded of the words of Abigail Adams: ``I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws''--which she is saying to her husband--``which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands.''
I rise enthusiastically to support H.J. Res. 79 and to say to my colleagues there is no constitutional prohibition for passing this.
We are grandly involved because this is the 1972 passage by the State of Texas of the equal rights amendment. And here, in 1977, Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug were in Houston at the 1977 National Women's Conference that our predecessor, Barbara Jordan, was at.
Let us pass H.J. Res. 79, because, as Abigail Adams said, let's remember the ladies.
Madam Speaker, as a senior member of the Committee on the Judiciary and an original cosponsor, I rise in strong and enthusiastic support of H.J. Res. 79, which eliminates the ratification deadline for the Equal Rights Amendment and will lead to the long overdue adding of the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Madam Speaker, I am reminded of the imperative powerfully expressed on March 31, 1776 in Braintree, Massachusetts in a letter from Abigail Adams, the future First Lady, to her husband John Adams:
I long to hear that you have declared an independency--and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.
The resolution before us will help enshrine for all time the belief, promise, and commitment that all men, and women, are created equal and endowed with by the Creator with the same inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We are making real this promise thanks to the bipartisan resolution introduced by Congresswoman Spiers of California.
The Constitution does not prohibit the action we are taking; in fact, it permits it since ratification deadlines are not even mentioned, much less imposed by the Constitution. This resolution reinforces that, the previous deadline is no bar to passing the ERA.
Under Article V of the Constitution, the Equal Rights Amendment ``shall be valid to all intents and purposes whenever ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states.''
A resolution identical to H.J. Res. 79 has been introduced in the United States Senate, which I call upon the Senate to take up and pass forthwith.
Madam Speaker, it is useful to review how we arrived at this moment in history.
Beginning in the late 1960s, the National Organization for Women (NOW) devised and began implementing a strategy of pushing for equal rights through a combination of impact litigation and advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment.
I remember this particularly well because in November 1977, the first National Women's Conference was held in Houston, Texas and attended my congressional predecessor, the Honorable Barbara Jordan.
The National Women's Conference was inspired by a 1975 United Nations-sponsored event from two years prior which led President Gerald Ford to establish a national commission to investigate women's issues.
Congress later voted to provide $5 million to fund the organization of regional conferences and to hold a national gathering at the conclusion, the result of these efforts was the National Women's Conference meant to unite all women and give them an opportunity to voice their hopes for the future of the government.
I remember that Phyllis Schlafly of the conservative Eagle Forum organized and came to Houston to lead backlash demonstration protesting the ERA and the women's movement, claiming that the ERA would force women to give up their right to be supported by their husbands, and subject them to the military. draft and deployment to Vietnam.
That was the launch of the conservative counter-offensive to derail ratification of the ERA and the beginning of the schism that has seen equality between the sexes and expanding the economic, privacy, and political rights of women subject to increasing partisan debate and action that is continues to the present day.
In 1970, Congresswoman Martha Griffiths of Michigan filed a discharge petition in the House to bring the ERA to the floor, after the Judiciary Committee consistently refused to act on it.
The discharge petition was adopted, and the ERA passed the House by a wide margin.
The Senate Judiciary Committee also held several days of hearings in 1970 on its version of the ERA but it failed to gain enough votes that year.
On October 12, 1971, the House voted by 354-24 to approve a version of the ERA that stated:
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each house concurring therein), that the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years of its submission by the Congress:
Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.
On March 22, 1972, the Senate passed the ERA by a vote of 84-8.
The following month, Madam Speaker, I graduated from college in the first undergraduate class of women to attend Yale University in September 1969.
I was a member of the group of 250 upper-class women who transferred to Yale University, a number that eventually led to 1,500 women being admitted over the years, in addition to the 4,000 male students.
Between September 12-14, 1969 undergraduate women students arrived on campus and at that time, 48 of 817 FAS faculty were women and only two had tenure.
I am proud to be a part of the history of Yale University and had the opportunity to speak about my experience at the 50th Anniversary last year.
The presence of women at Yale, which had been an all-male institution was a sign of the change that was sweeping the nation.
I first arrived at Yale with the anticipation and anxiety of any college student arriving on campus for the first time.
This was an extraordinary milestone--both for Yale and for us young women.
But being a ``first'' is not all that people may assume that it is.
In the centennial year of the 19th Amendment, on January 15, 2020, the Virginia General Assembly became the 38th state to vote to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, the magic number needed to become enshrined in the Constitution.
Because of the ERA, women are finally included in our Constitution, making them equal to men under law.
A vote to eliminate the ratification deadline for the ERA is a vote for equality; a vote against the measure is a vote to preserve the legacy of sex discrimination.
Women will not continue to be second-class citizens in their own country.
The absence of the ERA has meant that women can be paid less for their work, violated with impunity, and discriminated against simply for being women.
Women made up more than 6 in 10 seniors who lived in poverty last year, with the poverty rate for senior women at 11 percent.
The average Social Security benefit for women 65 and older is about $14,270 per year, compared to about $18,375 for men 65 and older.
In the 116th Congress, women hold just 23.6 percent of seats in the U.S. Congress.
In 2019, just 33 Fortune 500 CEOs are women, a new record.
While women-owned businesses account for 42 percent of all firms, women-owned business account for just 8 percent of the total private sector workforce and 4.3 percent of total revenue.
Some legal scholars note the location of the deadline in the preamble is important, because the ERA's deadline was not part of the text that the states voted on when they ratified the amendment.
Other scholars argue that the deadline itself is unconstitutional because Article V of the Constitution does not include mention of deadlines.
A close reading and clear understanding of the Constitution leads inescapably to the conclusion that when the Framers considered a time period to be of the essence, they specified the time period clearly in the document itself.
Moreover, in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433 (1939), the Supreme Court rejected the idea that Article V contains an implied limitation period for ratifications.
Madam Speaker, as a country founded on principles of liberty, justice and equality, and a global leader in formulating international human rights standards, the United States need to pass the ERA to meet basic standards for women who are denied equal access to legal rights and protections.
Too many women in the United States inexplicably lag behind international human rights standards and it is a myth that women in the United States already enjoy all of the expected standards of rights and protections afforded under America.
The reality is, women in the United States experience continued discrimination and daunting disparities that prevent them from fully participating as equal members of society.
For example, women have risen to some of the highest levels of legislative and executive representation over the years, yet with 20% of Congressional Members and an average of 24.9% of state legislatures, but the United States ranks #72 in the global market of women represented in public and political positions.
While the number of women justices has significantly increased, women litigants' access to justice is severely limited.
Although women vote in higher percentages than men, women's access to voting is under attack in many states where increased voter ID requirements and voter purges pose unprecedented barriers.
Although women constitute nearly half of the US labor force, at a participation rate of 57%, equal economic opportunity is severely lacking given deficient or nonexistent mandatory standards for workplace accommodations for pregnant women, post-natal mothers and persons with care responsibilities.
What also remains a shameful truth in America, is the gender wage gap which has remained at or near 21% over the past decade.
And women with higher levels of education experience the largest earning gaps, as do minority women regardless of educational attainment.
The percentage of women in poverty has increased over the past decade, from 12.1% to 14.5%, with a higher rate of poverty than men and women are exposed to higher rates of homelessness and violence without adequate protections in place in shelters and housing support options.
Women in detention facilities throughout the country also experience increasingly high rates of over-incarceration, sexual violence, shackling while pregnant, solitary confinement, lack of alternative custodial sentencing for women with dependent children, and insufficient access to health care and re-entry programs.
Migrant women traveling to the U.S., many victims of trafficking and violence, including sexual violence, are kept in detention centers with children for prolonged periods of time.
The U.N. has reported that women, particularly black and LBTQ women, in the U.S. experience police brutality and increased incidents of homicide by police.
Even though women own over one-third of commercial businesses in the United States, primarily in small and medium sized businesses, these businesses face greater barriers in obtaining low cost capital from sources such as the SBA--which awards less than 5% of federal contracts to women-owned business.
Finally, one of the most alarming deficiencies for women in America is the inability to access basic health care and the imposition of devastating barriers to reproductive health and rights.
Too many women are suffering dire and deadly consequences.
Between 1990 and 2013, the maternal mortality rate for women in the U.S. has increased by 136%.
Black women are nearly 4 times more likely to die in childbirth, and states with high poverty rates have a 77% higher maternal mortality rate.
The United States deserves to much better.
It is unacceptable that women in America are facing a health care crisis so dire that the global community is denouncing it as a human rights violation.
Sadly, the direction States are taking will only further dismantle women's access to affordable and trustworthy reproductive healthcare.
While clinics are shutting down at drastic rates throughout the country, devastating restrictions and barriers imposed throughout Texas strike at the core of this abomination.
A Texas statute known as HB2 (House Bill 2), was enacted several years ago under false claims to promote women's health, when in fact it only set in motion dangerous restrictions on women's access to reproductive health care.
In addition to constant attacks on funding for reproductive health care clinics, abortion providers in Texas were forced to undergo impossible million-dollar renovations and upgrades.
Denying hundreds of thousands of women health care services in Texas, nearly half of all reproductive health care clinics were forced to shut down, and now only 10 remain in the second largest state in the country.
No woman in America should be denied the dignity of being ability to make choices about her body and healthcare.
Access to safe, legal and unhindered healthcare must be realized by all women.
These simple facts can no longer be denied, and hypocrisy can no longer be tolerated.
A woman's personal autonomy over her own body and her right to choose whether to bear or beget a child is a constitutionally protected fundamental right.
More than 40 years ago in the landmark decision in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment extends to a woman's decision to have an abortion.
We cannot ignore the obvious hypocrisy of imbalanced protection and access to fundamentally protected rights for women in America when it is easier to purchase and lawfully possess a firearm--even for a person on the terrorist watchlist--than it is for a woman to exercise her constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
Madam Speaker, this is not fair, and it is not right.
And with the ERA added to the Constitution, it will also not be lawful.
Madam Speaker, Congress had the authority to extend the deadline and it chose to do in 1979; a fortiori, it has the power to eliminate the deadline today.
And that is the right, just, and moral thing to do.
I urge all Members to stand on the right side of history and join me in voting to pass H.J. Res. 79 so that the Equal Rights Amendment can take its rightful place as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Garcia).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Neguse).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I would remind everyone that the equal rights amendment simply says: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied on account of sex.
If people on the other side want to admit that equality of rights under the law means there must be a constitutional right to abortion, well, that is wonderful. Of course, the constitutional right to abortion is already established under current law.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia (Mrs. McBath).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the distinguished Speaker of the House.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Dean).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).
Mrs. CAROLYN B. MALONEY of New York. Madam Speaker, I thank Chairman Nadler and Jackie Speier for their historic leadership on the equal rights amendment.
Madam Speaker, first introduced in 1923, the equal rights amendment is still as relevant and necessary as ever because we know that equality for women will always elude us when it isn't etched into our Constitution.
We have seen it when the Supreme Court gutted the Violence Against Women Act; we have seen it when judges don't enforce equal pay for equal work or when a Federal judge ruled that Congress didn't have the authority to outlaw female genital mutilation. But if your rights are in the Constitution, then they can't be rolled back by the changing whims of legislators, judges, or Presidents.
Women are long past due equal treatment under the law, and we will persist until it is firmly guaranteed. There is no deadline for equality. We demand our equality be spelled out in the Constitution, and we spell it E-R-A.
Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this important vote for equality.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Lawrence).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Virginia (Ms. Wexton).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Underwood).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from the State of Virginia (Mr. Beyer), who is from the 38th State.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu).
Ms. JUDY CHU of California. Madam Speaker, since women gained the right to vote 100 years ago, we have made incredible progress--rolling back laws like those that kept us from serving on juries, owning land, or even getting our own credit card--and this Congress has more women than ever.
But true equality is still a goal, not a reality. The fact is women are still paid less than men for the same work, and we still have men passing laws that dictate our choices about our bodies.
It is clear, if we want equality, we need the ERA, and the people agree. We saw that at women's marches across the country and in the groundswell of the #MeToo movement.
That energy is leading to change. The people are speaking. It is up to us to listen. Arbitrary deadlines are no reason to silence our voices.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' and give women the same rights as men.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from Hawaii (Mr. Case).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).
Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Madam Speaker, after nearly a century, the equal rights amendment is on the cusp of ratification.
At America's founding, women were intentionally left out of the Constitution. As second-class citizens, we lacked the right to vote, hold most jobs, or even own property. Today, we still receive less pay for the same work, and we face violence and harassment just for being women. But the ERA will prohibit all of that. In the eyes of our most sacred document, we will finally be equal.
Women's rights should not depend on congressional whims or who occupies the White House. These basic fundamental rights must be guaranteed.
But, if we want to hand a more perfect union to our daughters--and I have two of them--we must seize this moment to end sex discrimination. We owe it to the women who sacrificed before us and all of our daughters and sons who deserve a life of true equality.
So I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this resolution to remove the arbitrary and outdated deadline for ratifying the ERA.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker,
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Once again, if Congress can enact a resolution putting a time limit, it can enact a resolution removing a time limit. And when the Senate passes this resolution, the ERA will be part of the Constitution.
Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib).
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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