AG Raoul sues to confirm ERA as 28th Amendment
Illinois attorney general joins Virginia, Nevada in pushing for formal acceptance of Equal Rights Amendment
Attorney General Kwame Raoul is suing to force formal recognition and certification of the Equal Rights Amendment. (Blue Room Stream)
By Ted Cox
Illinois’s attorney general is putting the weight of his office behind formal acceptance of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul joined his counterparts in Virginia and Nevada Thursday in filing suit against a federal agency to compel recognition of the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The issue resurfaced earlier this month when Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment, thus achieving the number of states required for ratification. But the legality is complicated in that the original ERA legislation passed by Congress in 1972 set a 1979 deadline for passage. That deadline was extended to 1982, but that too passed without ratification, as Illinois was one of the states to deny it.
The General Assembly reversed that two years ago, when Illinois became the 37th state to ratify, following Nevada, which had taken the same step in 2017. But the issue was additionally muddied in the intervening decades by four states voting to rescind their original approval. At the time, in 2018, backers were hoping at very least to force Congress to revisit the issue and perhaps extend the deadline to the present.
The federal suit filed Thursday by Raoul and his counterparts in Virginia and Nevada doesn’t send the matter back to Congress, but instead presses the case that ratification is complete, and the ERA should be recognized and certified as the 28th Amendment by the official archivist of the United States, the defendant named in the suit.
According to the Associated Press: “The attorneys general argue that the deadline passed by Congress is not binding. The time limitation was not included in the text of the article that was sent to the states for consideration, they argue. Additionally, the attorneys general say, the U.S. Constitution doesn’t explicitly give Congress the power to set a timeline for states to ratify an amendment. They note that the last amendment to be added in 1992 — the 27th Amendment limiting the ability of members of Congress to raise their own pay — took more than 200 years to be ratified by 38 states.”
“Equal rights are not contingent upon a person’s gender or sex, which is why I was proud to vote in support of the Equal Rights Amendment as an Illinois state senator, and I am committed to continuing to fight for the ERA to be recognized as the 28th Amendment,” Raoul said in a statement issued with a news release on the filing. “It is past time that we ensure women across the country have the constitutional equality to which they are entitled, and I look forward to my daughter — who aspires to study law — being able to one day, when sworn into the bar, take an oath to promise to support a constitution that recognizes her right to equality under the law.”
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring praised his state for being the 38th to ratify the amendment, adding, “For too long, women have not been afforded the same protections as men under the Constitution. We now have this historic opportunity to ensure that equal rights regardless of sex are added to the Constitution. Virginians have made it clear that it is their will that the ERA be ratified, and I now have the great honor of continuing that fight to make sure that gender equality is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing equality for generations of women to come.”
“Women have always been endowed with equal rights, even though our country has wrongly failed to recognize them,” said Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford. “These rights are entitled to their rightful place in the Constitution, and I am committed to ensuring they are permanently written into our nation’s history and its future. Advancing civil rights is one of my administration’s main areas of focus. The gravity of this movement should not be underplayed — today we are advocating for women’s rights here in Nevada and all over the country, and we are taking an essential stride towards inclusivity.”
Gov. J.B. Pritzker immediately backed Raoul, posting a message on Facebook stating: “Our nation was founded on the principle that all are created equal — but in reality, discrimination on the basis of sex has raged on for centuries. Thank you, AG Raoul, for defending millions of Americans who have been deprived of their equal rights for far too long.”
The ERA has been under consideration in one form or another for almost a century, since at least 1923. The version approved by a bipartisan majority in Congress in 1972 states simply: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
It swiftly cleared 35 statehouses by the mid-’70s, but those last three states proved more elusive, as it came under attack from reactionary conservative activists like Phyllis Schlafly, who led opposition in Illinois. It failed to pass the Illinois House in 1982 when Speaker George Ryan, later to be disgraced and imprisoned after serving as governor, refused to call a vote on a rule change that would have allowed passage by a simple majority rather than the three-fifths vote required by the state constitution.
Two years ago, opposition was led in the House by then-Rep. Jeanne Ives, a Wheaton Republican who’d just lost a Republican primary challenge to then-Gov. Bruce Rauner. She argued that women already are protected in the workplace through Title VII of the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Act, and she characterized the amendment as a “defunct law” that “won’t mean anything” unless men in leadership positions were held personally accountable for their actions.
On Thursday, Carol Jenkins, chief executive officer of the ERA Coalition/Fund for Women’s Equality, applauded the attorneys general and their suit, saying, “This country is ready for constitutional equality for women. Our research shows that 94 percent of all Americans believe in it. We have worked tirelessly for nearly 100 years. This movement cannot be stopped. The Constitution must be amended and it will be.”