BURSTRep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) led a coalition of fellow legislators and advocates on Tuesday in calling on President Biden to certify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) before his term ends in January.
Citing the incoming Trump administration and soon-to-be GOP controlled House and Senate, Bush said “lives are on the line” if the ERA is not passed.
“The publication of the Equal Rights Amendment may be long overdue, but the stakes for gender equality have never been higher,” the outgoing lawmaker said from outside the Capitol on Tuesday.
She also pointed to the Supreme Court hearing oral arguments for a case that could unilaterally ban gender affirming care for transgender minors as well as the ongoing abortion bans across the nation.
“Our bodies, our rights, our lives are on the line,” Bush said. “While progress has been made in enacting laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex, equal rights are still not constitutionally protected.”
She added that with the GOP's full control of government next year, this could be Democrats’ only chance for the next four years to see the ERA finally enacted.
“Donald Trump is about to take office again. This is a man who has been openly hostile to women, reproductive freedoms, our LGBTQIA+ community, Black and brown people and so many others,” she said.
“President Biden and Democrats warned of the threat posed by Donald Trump on our bodily autonomy and on our democracy, a threat that is about to become reality very soon. President Biden has the power to do something about this," the Missouri Democrat continued. "He has the ERA. The ERA is one sentence that has the power to protect our future.”
The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, reads that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
In short, it guarantees equality of rights under the law for all persons, regardless of gender.
Despite the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, advocates argue the constitution does not grant equal rights in a uniform and inclusive way as the ERA would.
The amendment would provide a clearer judicial standard for deciding cases of gender discrimination and would clarify sex discrimination to invalidate the claim of former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that the 14th Amendment does not protect against it. Advocates also say the ERA would protect LGBTQ+ Americans, particularly gender-nonconforming and transgender individuals.
As of Jan. 27, 2020, the ERA has satisfied the requirements of Article V of the Constitution for ratification — thanks, in part, to the vote of Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.), whose backing made Virginia the necessary 38th state to ratify the ERA.
“Since our nation's inception, brave men and women have been fighting to ensure that the promises upon which this country were founded are true for all,” McClellan said Tuesday. “It's been a fight propelled by abolitionists, the civil rights movement, the suffrage movement, the women's rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, the LGBTQ+ movement."
"From the very beginning, it included women of color on the front lines, even though we were told to march in the back and even though we've been the last to benefit from every social justice movement," she added.
“It is absurd that 101 years later, we are still fighting the same fights as our mothers, our grandmothers and our great grandmothers,” the Virginia lawmaker continued. “We will continue to fight if necessary, so that our daughters don't have to. But we've done the work. It is time for the ERA to be published.”
Advocates highlighted Republican attempts to limit access to contraception, rollbacks of transgender rights and the conservative Project 2025 agenda in their call to action.
But advocates also pressed Biden on promises he made to voters four years ago that they say he has not delivered on yet.
“President Biden, we shouldn't have to fight so hard. You promised the young people of America you would fight for us and fight for our futures," Rosie Couture of the Young Feminist Party, said at the event. "You promised us to defend our reproductive freedom. You promised us to protect our access to gender-affirming health care and safe schools. You promised to protect us against gender-based violence."
“You remain the one person standing in between the young people, the young women and queer people of America and our inclusion in the United States Constitution – my inclusion in the United States Constitution," Couture continued. "As we stare down the second Trump presidency, the urgency and necessity of the Equal Rights Amendment is clear. It isn't too late to step up. It isn't too late to defend our futures."
She added to Biden that "the young woman and LGBTQ+ people in America demand you put us in the Constitution."