House passes bill to revive Equal Rights Amendment

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The US House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday that would revive the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) by repealing the 1982 deadline that states had been given to ratify it, the Washington Examiner reports. The ERA was designed principally to ban federal and state laws that discriminate against women; its central principle is that sex should not determine the legal rights of men or women.

Passed in the House by 222-204 votes, the bill was introduced weeks after a federal court ruled that, as the 1982 deadline had long expired, the process of getting the remaining 38 states to ratify the ERA would have to start from the beginning, the Examiner said.

The bill was introduced by the Democrats last year, but the Republican-controlled Senate ignored it. Although the Democrats now control the Senate as well, the bill requires 60 Senatorial votes, and only four GOP House members approved it on Wednesday.

Republicans have opposed the bill, arguing it is unconstitutional and could result in the cancellation of laws that prohibit tax-payer funded and late-term abortions, among other anti-abortion legislation, the Examiner said.

Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that ratificaiton of the ERA “is long overdue” and would entrench the Constitutional provision that “no one can be denied equal protection on the basis of sex.”

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