“Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

This is the basis of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), first proposed in 1923 by Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party. There is no part of the U.S. Constitution that guarantees equal rights for women.

The ERA has been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. It has been ratified by ALL 38 states (with Virginia as the 38th state voting to ratify in 2020) necessary to make this amendment a reality and to eliminate all legal gender-based discrimination.

However, a deadline for ratification was imposed until 1979, which was then extended to 1982. The ERA was considered a dead issue until 1992, when the 27th Amendment (addressing pay for members of Congress), was ratified 202 years after it was introduced. Unlike the ERA and other amendments it had no deadline for ratification.

In February of 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove the deadline for ratification of the ERA. Currently the bill to extend the deadline to ratify the ERA is before the U.S. Senate. There are 49 cosponsors as of July.

In addition, five states that voted to ratify the amendment in the 1970s want to rescind their state’s ratification.

There is an argument as to whether extending the ratification deadline is Constitutional. There is also an argument as to whether states can rescind prior ratifications.

There are currently lawsuits pending against the United States Archivist who, based on the advice of the Department of Justice has not certified Virginia’s ratification.

As for our own state, the ERA was passed by the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1972 but was not passed in the Senate when it was finally brought up for a vote in 1982. As of January and February 2021, bills to ratify the ERA in both the South Carolina Senate and House of Representatives are pending.