ERA in the News: Dec 14-20, 2019

Hello all.

We are now officially three weeks away from the reconvening of the General Assembly in Virginia on January 8, 2020. We are monitoring the situation to see when state legislators in that state will bring the Equal Rights Amendment up for a vote. We'll share information as soon as we have it.

As you may have heard, this past week the Attorney General in Alabama his filed a lawsuit to block the ERA's ratification. The state of Alabama is joined in the lawsuit by the states of Louisiana and South Dakota. It is a shameful exercise to continue to deny women and men constitutional equality. You can read more about the lawsuit HERE. We will be working to coordinate our response plan, and will keep you informed as this situation develops.

Krista Niles, the Outreach and Civic Engagement Director of the Alice Paul Institute has released this comment on the lawsuit: “ The Alabama Attorney General’s lawsuit to halt the progress of the Equal Rights Amendment toward full ratification to the Unites States Constitution is a deeply disappointing attempt to continue to deny women and men from gaining full constitutional equality. It replicates decades old misinformation campaigns that further deny citizens access to the truth, including the fact that 94% of Americans publicly support the Equal Rights Amendment. As 2020 approaches and we celebrate 100 years of women’s voting rights in the United States, the anti-ERA lawsuit is a shameful exercise that denies women, and men, equal legal rights .”

The ERA Coalition has released a statement on the lawsuit, in which they say, " The filing of a lawsuit by Alabama’s Attorney-General to stop the Equal Rights Amendment is a shameful effort to keep women from gaining Constitutional equality. 94% of Americans support the ERA - 99% of millennials who all believe that it is time to end second class citizenship for women who were intentionally left out of the Constitution more than two hundred years ago." You can read the entire statement HERE.

Also, we would like to bring your attention to a statement released by the National Archives on December 19, 2020, in which an they announce an inquiry with the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel. This inquiry is in response to the lawsuit. "In light of the public interest and ongoing debate about the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requested guidance from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel on legal issues regarding ratification of the ERA. These issues are currently presented in a lawsuit filed by the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and South Dakota against the Archivist of the United States. NARA does not intend to take any action regarding the ERA until, at a minimum, it receives the guidance it previously requested and in no event before February 15, 2020."

We wish each of you a delightful holiday season, and we are very excited to fight alongside you in the new year as we prepare to renew our advocacy and activism to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.

P.S. Keep an eye on this blog in the new year! We will be announcing a new national social media campaign in January 2020!