Tag: ERA

AN UPDATE ON ERA LITIGATION – SPECIAL GUEST POST BY WENDY MURPHY

Posted on by

By Wendy Murphy, J. D., Impact Litigator

Last week we received a ruling in our lawsuit (Equal Means Equal v. Donald Trump) to establish women’s full legal equality by challenging the constitutionality of the Selective Service Act, which forbids women to register for the military draft. It is a very rare example of a law that explicitly treats women and men differently. Most instances where women suffer unequal treatment are in the enforcement of laws, and in the actions and inactions of government officials.

As expected, the judge ruled that we do have standing because the primary plaintiff is a woman who tried to register for the draft, but was rejected solely because of her sex.

Because women have standing, the court had to address the merits. This is vitally important because courts routinely deny women standing as a way of avoiding having to address the issue of women’s inequality. This keeps the problem of women’s inequality invisible, which obviously contributes to the problem of activism. Simply put, most women aren’t even aware that the Constitution has established them as unequal second-class citizens. This helps to maintain women’s subjugation because women will not fight for equality if they don’t know they don’t have it. They will, instead, suffer horrendous injustices, and feel hopeless and upset, but never come to understand that the primary cause of their suffering is the Constitution.

Because standing is so important, we are happy to have prevailed on the standing issue, especially considering that the government spent most of its brief arguing that we lacked standing.

As for the merits, the court ruled that it cannot address the question of whether the Selective Service Act is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court has already ruled – in 1981 – that it is, and only the Supreme Court can reverse itself. This ruling is inconsistent with what a different judge ruled on the exact same issue a few years ago in New Jersey where the court said that the Supreme Court’s decision is not binding precedent because the conditions under which that ruling was decided have changed.

The court also ruled that the ERA is not valid because the deadline expired long before the last state ratified. Again, we were not surprised by this, and to some extent we wanted this to be the ruling because it enables us to appeal.

An appeal is appealing (pardon the pun) because it is an opportunity yet again to show the federal courts that many people support our view that the ERA is valid, and while courts have yet to agree, we will not stop fighting until the Supreme Court decides the issue.

We do intend to appeal, which  means the First Circuit Court of Appeals will soon decide the issue.

We will have an amicus brief and welcome all the help we can get.

Meanwhile, we will also be filing similar cases in other jurisdictions. It is important that we file more cases soon because in December 2026, women will no longer be able to achieve standing on the Selective Service Act challenges. This is because Congress quietly inserted into the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act in December 2025, changing the registration process so that men will be registered automatically for the draft when they turn 18. For now, they must fill out a form, but in December the government will do that for them. This will deprive women of standing because they can no longer suffer the “legal injury” of being rejected by the government, and it is not enough of an “injury” to say the law itself harms women by excluding them.

This law change was done solely because of our case, so it’s a good sign that they are paying attention and so worried about women filing lawsuits that they bothered to burden Congress with the task of making the draft registration process automatic even though we haven’t had a draft since 1973 and won’t likely have another one anytime soon.

We take such small victories very seriously –

Sometimes victories don’t look like victories, but in high stakes litigation, anything that teaches us something or helps educate the public is important.

See also Wendy’s article in the Boston Globe: Unequal Draft, Unequal Rights

Tell PBS News Hour to Interview Equal Means Equal

Posted on by

PBS News Hour recently aired some segments entitled “On Democracy” wherein they failed to acknowledge the fully-ratified Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment, in addition to other errors and omissions in their reporting. They also interviewed Colleen Shogun, the previous National Archivist, without mentioning her failure to publish the ERA onto the Constitution, as was her duty. Equal Means Equal protested this failure of Shogun and the Biden Administration at the National Archives in January of this year.

The Green Alliance for Sex-Based Rights has posted a letter it penned to PBS in this regard, and are calling for supporters of the ERA to write and call PBS to get Wendy Murphy, J.D., Kamala Lopez, CEO, and Arlaine Rockey, Legal Consultant, of Equal Means Equal on the show. If EME gets on the show, it can correct the reporting by PBS News Hour  and update their viewers on current cases EME lawyers have filed to validate the ERA in the courts, like Equal Means Equal v. Donald J. Trump.

We urge our members and allies to pressure PBS News Hour to get Equal Means Equal on their show. Women need to unite behind securing Equality and end the second-class handmaiden citizenship to which we are currently subjected. #ERAis28A!!

THOUGHTS ABOUT THE SKRMETTI DECISION

Posted on by

By Ann Menasche

This piece is the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Feminists in Struggle as an organization.

Radical feminists, parents and many others holding a range of political views, welcomed the Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Skrmetti issued on June 11th upholding the constitutionality of a Tennessee law banning the practice of so-called “gender affirming care” for minors under 18.  Many were anxious to put a stop to this medical experiment on a vulnerable group of children and teens, mostly girls, who are gender non-conforming, autistic, and/or survivors of trauma, a majority of whom, if provided appropriate support, would be likely to grow up lesbian or gay with their bodies and fertility intact.

The decision moved the struggle to the states against this sexist and homophobic practice (based on the idea that some people are born “wrong” and need “fixing” so their bodies “align” with sex stereotypes).  Already, 26 states have passed restrictions or bans on use by minors of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and cosmetic surgeries for “sex change” and more such laws are now likely.  This is good news especially for these “trans kids” whose bodies are being experimented on and permanently harmed.

But like all victories issued under this right-wing court, some of the reasoning in the decision may be a bit of a two-edged sword that could be used against women’s rights in the future.

The majority decision by Justice Roberts held that Tennessee’s law was not subject to heightened (“intermediate”) scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because it did not classify based on sex.  Neither did the law classify based transgender status but merely regulates a medical procedure, removing one set of diagnosis – gender dysphoria or incongruence – from a range of treatable conditions.  Such classifications based on age or medical use are subject only to rational basis review.  This is easily passed here.  The Court points to medical and scientific uncertainty and the reviews and restrictions on use of these treatments on minors coming out of the UK, Sweden, Norway, and other countries.  Justice Roberts also distinguishes Bostock; and further points out that Tennessee law has nothing to do with sex stereotyping or restrictions on clothing, behavior etc. All good news.

However, the Court majority relies on and reinforces some very bad law – that discrimination based on pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions, including bans on abortion do not constitute sex discrimination because not all women are pregnant, even though only women can get pregnant or seek abortions.  “Thus, although only transgender individuals seek treatment for gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder and gender incongruence – just as only biological women can be become pregnant – there is a ‘lack of identity’ between transgender status and the excluded medical diagnosis.”  Therefore, even were the ERA recognized as part of the Constitution and sex treated as a suspect class subject to strict scrutiny, abortion bans or other discriminatory treatment based on pregnancy could not be successfully challenged as sex discrimination with the current Supreme Court majority.

The concurring opinions are noteworthy.  Justice Thomas’ description of the horror of what “gender affirming care” actually consists of in practice is quite good; as is Justice Barrett’s review of why the transgender population does not share “the obvious, immutable or distinguishing characteristics of a discrete group” to be a suspect class, like sex or race.  Rather, the transgender population is “large, diverse, and amorphous.” and lacks a history of de jure discrimination that women and people of color have faced. The dissent points to bans on cross-dressing and sodomy laws as proof of de jure discrimination against transgender persons; however, in my view, those laws target gays and cross-dressers, and do not specifically target individuals with transgender identities or who medicalize to hide or deny their sex.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion argues that discrimination based on transgender status is a sex-based classification, and that the Tennessee law is discriminatory.  She believes that hormones and surgeries are “a matter of life or death”; she also implies that it is possible to switch puberties.  Justice Kagan, while also calling for heightened scrutiny, to her credit, takes no view on how the Tennessee law would fare under such scrutiny.

Finally, not one Justice thinks sex discrimination claims under Equal Protection should be subjected to strict scrutiny.  Of course, there is no mention of the ERA.  Though sex is deemed immutable, because of the existence of biological sex differences that society “celebrates”, the Court unanimously rejects strict scrutiny for “sex” that is accorded race discrimination.  The entire Court is therefore committed to maintaining women’s second-class status.

EXCITING FORUM MAY 10th ON PERSPECTIVES & STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Posted on by

Tickets on sale now for forum on the ERA with well-known feminist leaders and activists. 

PERSPECTIVES & STRATEGIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ERA

Feminists in Struggle is honored to have three amazing guest speakers who have been in the forefront of the fight to register the already ratified Equal Rights Amendment into the Constitution. This is a strategic discussion not to be missed!

This will be a remote event on Zoom. A link will be sent to everyone who registers. REGISTER

WENDY MURPHY is an adjunct professor of Sexual Violence and Law Reform at New England Law | Boston where she also co-directs the Women’s and Children’s Advocacy Project (WCAP) under the Center for Law and Social Responsibility. WCAP runs the Judicial Language Project, and the Hate Crimes Against Women project, WCAP also files amicus briefs and engages in public interest litigation to advance the rights of women and children. On January 7, 2020, WCAP filed a first-in-the-nation federal lawsuit to validate the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in Massachusetts federal court.

Wendy was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School from 2002-03 and served as the Mary Joe Frug Assistant Professor of Law at New England Law | Boston from 2001-2002. She is a former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor and founded the first organization in the nation to provide pro bono legal services to victims of violence involved in the criminal justice system. Wendy is an impact litigator who practices in state and federal courts and specializes in advancing the constitutional and civil rights of women and children.

Wendy has authored numerous scholarly articles including a landmark piece explaining the legal relationship between sexual assault on campus and Title IX. Wendy filed many impact litigation cases involving Title IX and campus sexual assault resulting in groundbreaking victories and leading to widespread awareness and reforms, including the well-known April 2011, Dear Colleague Letter. Her most recent law review article is a feminist critical reexamination of the history of women’s struggle for equality and is entitled, “Unequal Protection of the Laws for Women is Constitutional Terrorism, So How Come Nobody Knows about It?”

She has also appeared on television as a legal analyst for many years and has worked for NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox News and has provided legal analysis for print and television media. She is the author of two books, “And Justice For Some,” published by Penguin/Sentinel in 2007 and “Oh No He Didn’t, Brilliant Women and the Men Who Took Credit for Their Work,” published by Cynren Press in 2024..

KAMALA LOPEZ, is a founder and President of Equal Means Equal, filmaker, activist & President of Heroica Films,.Kamala Lopez, launched the movement and documentary film Equal Means Equal, to educate Americans about the importance of equal rights under federal law for women and complete the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

JEAN SWEENEY graduated from the College of the Holy Cross as part of the third class of women and is a New York attorney who spent 15 years on Wall Street as counsel to the money managers. In 2001 she joined the litigation practice of Maloof and Browne LLC as a managing attorney. For the last 12 years she has had the privilege of following her passion of getting women to be honored and respected as equal citizens. She was one of the activists working to get the last 3 States to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and has worked for the last 5 years on getting our Constitution published with the ERA by leading the National ERA Publication Task Force. She is also an award- winning photographer, Kripalu-trained yoga teacher, writer, speaker, and founder of Rethinking Eve LLC, a business focused on uplifting women.

This is a woman-only event and is interactive, with plenty of time for questions and discussion from participants.

 

The ERA: the Journey to become the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

Posted on by

Picture: Lady Justice also known as Themis and Justitia from Greek and Roman mythology

Flag: Represents the ERA with the suffragist colors and the stars for the 38 ratified states

Our Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the document that defines how the federal government is structured and how it operates. Additionally, the Constitution includes important civil rights that are guaranteed to all citizens. The Constitution became effective on March 4, 1789. It has been amended 28 times, beginning on December 15,1791 with the first 10 amendments, also known as the Bill of Rights.

For an amendment to be added to the constitution it must meet two requirements outlined in Article V of the Constitution.

1. An amendment must be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose.
2. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures (38), or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.

The United States National Archivist then follows the 1 USC 106b Statute passed by Congress which defines its ministerial duties that includes recording the date of ratification for each State. Once ratified by three-fourths of the States, the National Archivist enters the date into the National Register that serves as an announcement to the States and others that the Amendment has been added. An updated Constitution is then published by the National Archivist. The Archivist primary role is to direct the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) – the nation’s record keeper.

On January 27, 2020, Virginia became the 38th State to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) making it the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution. With this amendment women gained the human right of equal protection of the law.

The Equal Rights Amendment

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

The ERA gives Congress the power to legislate and requires the courts to enforce laws that lift women to equal citizenship with men. This is important in order to ensure that women are no longer subject to discriminatory laws, policies, or statutes. The ERA ensures United States laws embraces equality for everyone, thereby providing equal rights and protections to all human beings.

When the government chooses to discriminate against women on the basis of sex, the ERA demands that the analysis applied by the courts be the highest standard of judicial review, called “strict scrutiny”, which is currently applied to discrimination based on immutable characteristics like race and national origin. Using a strict scrutiny analysis, the government must show that sex discrimination is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest, and the government is using the least restrictive means available. Without strict scrutiny, far more discrimination against women is legally allowed. With the ERA in the federal Constitution cases involving sexual harassment, unequal pay, and/or other issues discrimination based on sex can be challenged with a higher probability of success.

Herstory about the ERA

It’s been a long road for women’s equality in the world’s oldest continuous democracy. When America began, single women were legally considered chattel, owned by their fathers, brothers, and sons, and married women were considered legally merged with their husbands. This remained the case for most of the United States’ history.

After the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were added to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment ended slavery unless convicted of a crime, the 14th Amendment established equal protection of the law for all citizens, and the 15th Amendment, created the right to vote for former enslaved males. The 14th amendment explicitly named “males” as having voting rights, and the 15th amendment excluded voter discrimination based on sex, though suffragists had fought hard for its inclusion.

After Reconstruction, women developed a two-prong strategy to remedy their exclusion from the Constitution, get the vote, and get equal protection of the law. Though women got the vote in 1920, when the 19th Amendment was added, women of color faced barriers, especially in the Jim Crow South, and were not actually able to exercise their right to vote until 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

The first iteration of the Equal Rights Amendment, written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman, was proposed to Congress in 1923, three years after the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. The ERA was named the Lucretia Mott Amendment after another prominent suffragist. After almost 50 years, an updated ERA was passed by the House on October 12, 1971 and Senate on March 22, 1972. State ratification began in 1972 through 2020. It took almost a century to meet the Constitutional requirements for an Amendment ensuring equal rights based on sex to be added to the Constitution.

When passed by Congress, a 7-year time limit was added to the preamble of the Amendment, which Congress extended for 3 more years. When that time limit expired, 35 of the required 38 states had ratified. At first women were disheartened, however, following the ratification of the 27th Amendment after over 202 years, women rallied. In fact, the 27th Amendment about Congressional pay raises was proposed with the original 10 amendments but was not ratified by the states until 1992. The National Archivist, Don Wilson, certified and published the Amendment without any judgments or involvement of others. He stated, “If I didn’t publish the 27th (Amendment) then I would be playing a role not delegated to me. The biggest factor for me was the fact that I shouldn’t interfere and needed to follow the statutory process.” Wilson was scolded by a member of Congress for certifying the amendment without congressional approval. According to Article V in the Constitution, Congress’ role is only the first step of the process. Historically, Congress passes a ceremonial affirming resolution after ratification of an Amendment.

Proponents of the ERA reached out to the then current National Archivist, David Ferriero, to confirm that he would certify and publish the 28th Amendment if the additional 3 states needed were ratified. This was confirmed in writing by the Archivist. Advocates, led by Equal Means Equal, then adopted a 3-state strategy arguing the time limit put in the preamble of the Amendment not in the text that the States ratified, like the 18th and 21st Amendments, is not constitutional and began again to press for ratification in the remaining states. Nevada ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in March 2017. Illinois ratified in May 2018. Then on January 27, 2020, Virginia became the 38th State to ratify the ERA, making it the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

There are only two requirements to amend the United States Constitution in Article V – that Congress pass the proposed amendment by a two-thirds vote, and that three-fourths of the states ratify the amendment. The Equal Rights Amendment met these requirements to become the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This has also been affirmed by the American Bar Association and the American Constitution Society. There is nothing in Article V about time limits or rescissions as some states purport.

The Equal Rights Amendment is the only Constitutional amendment which has met the requirements in Article V, but to date has not yet been published.

President Trump through his Attorney General, William Barr, inserted himself in the constitutional amendment process by stopping the Archivist, David Ferriero, from completing the certification of Virginia’s ratification. He did this by issuing an Office of Legal Council (OLC) memo, which is nonbinding. In a press release, Archivist Ferriero summarized the conclusion from the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) “Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a deadline on the ratification of the ERA and, because that deadline has expired, the ERA Resolution is no longer pending before the States … [and] the ERA’s adoption could not be certified.” The memorandum also stated that once Congress proposes an amendment to the states, it has no further role in the ratification process and therefore lacks authority to modify the original deadline.

It is the role of the Courts to determine the ERA’s validity if someone chooses to challenge the amendment. Historically, those who oppose any Amendment had to argue their case with the burden on them.

President Joe Biden’s Administration, once in office, called on Congress to act swiftly which prompted two Congressional resolutions. One to remove the ERA time limit and the other to affirm that the ERA was the 28th Amendment. During the next four years, Congress was unable to pass either resolution.

In 2021, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland fought against the ERA in two federal lawsuits. On January 26, 2022, the Department of Justice issued an OLC opinion that did not withdraw the 2020 memorandum’s conclusion concerning the ERA time limit but said there was no obstacle to Congress’s ability to act with respect to the ERA’s ratification or to judicial consideration of questions regarding the constitutional status of the amendment.

Some ERA Advocates focused only on passage of the resolutions while other advocates used a pressure campaign pushing President Biden to instruct the Archivist to publish the ERA before he left office. The pressure included letters, phone calls, texts, emails, social media posts, petitions, press conferences, and outreach to anyone that could influence the President including his sister. Letters were sent to the President from 46 Senators, 122 House members, 143 diverse organizations (led by Shattering Glass and the League of Women Voters), 100s of women leaders of the Labor Movement, 60 faith-based organizations (led by the National Council of Jewish Women), National Association of Women Lawyers and Women Lawyers on Guard, Women’s Bar Association of DC, along with the New Hampshire and Ohio State Legislators. The following organizations made public statements: the Reproductive Health Coalition (led by American Medical Women’s Association and Doctors for America), North Carolina Association of Women Lawyers, New York City Bar Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other leading fertility and OB/GYN associations. On August 6, 2024 a Resolution and Report from the American Bar Association urged immediate publication/implementation warning that without the ERA, the 14th Amendment sex-based equal protection is “in grave peril.”

In addition, on December 13, 2024, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women sent President Biden a letter and urged him to direct the Federal Archivist to publish the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution immediately. She stated, “Your role is to fulfill your Article II, Section 3 duty under the “Take Care” Clause, to ensure that laws are faithfully executed. This duty is mandatory. By directing the Archivist to certify the last state that ratified in 2020 and publish the ERA, you will be allowing the Constitutional process to continue and be able to inform the UN that the United States has finally met its obligation.” She reminded him that the United States of America is required to adopt a constitutional sex equality amendment that “guarantee protections against sex- and gender-based discrimination in its Constitution, including through initiatives such as the Equal Rights Amendment. She requested that he answer three critical questions. It is unknown if he ever responded.

Equal Means Equal (EME) orchestrated mass protests in DC and across the country to pressure President Biden to publish the ERA. On January 10th at the National Archives in Washington DC, EME in partnership with Vote Equality US conducted a final direct action that resulted in over thirty people being detained and 6 arrested. Dressed in construction worker safety gear activists replaced the building’s center banner with one calling out President Biden directly: “Publish the ERA, Hero or Zero,” This banner, along with two others, were confiscated by police. Additional activists arrived dressed as women from the science-fiction Dune holding a banner announcing SISTERHOOD ABOVE ALL. The National Archivist then issued a statement on the National Archives website stating an act of Congress or a court order is now required before publication. Never in the history of constitutional amendments has an Archivist made judgements or dictated requirements outside their ministerial role in the process as defined in the 1 USC 106b Statute. Subsequently, the New York Bar Association issued a rebuke of this statement by the National Archivist’s inappropriate presumption of this authority.

Due to the pressure campaign and direct action, on January 17, 2025, President Biden issued this statement affirming that the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) is the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: “In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex.” Those who publicly supported the Presidents’ affirming statement included Laurence H. Tribe (a Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University), Kathleen M. Sullivan (former Dean of Stanford Law School and professor of law at Harvard and Stanford), and Russ Feingold (President of the American Constitution Society).
It is important to note that Presidents have no authority to declare the validity of amendments. That is up to the courts.

President Trump’s Administration, once back in office, dismissed the National Archivist, Colleen Shogan, on February 7, 2025. Then, several senior staffers quit or retired. Other staffers at the agency accepted government-offered deferred resignations or were fired because of their probationary status. Since February 16, 2025, Marco Rubio, newly appointed Secretary of State, became the acting National Archivist. Prior to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) becoming a nonpartisan independent agency, the duty was vested in the General Services Administration, and, before the establishment of that agency in 1949, it formed part of the duties of the United States Secretary of State. The position of National Archivist was created in 1934 by Congress.

There are a number of process irregularities in the way this particular amendment has been handled:

1. Although the constitutional process only has two requirements to be added to the Constitution, Congress added a time limit which essentially modifies the constitutional process which does not require one to be set.
2. An Attorney General inserted himself in the ratification process that made a judgement about the time limit when he has no role in the process.
3. An Archivist whose role is ministerial presumed to expand their authority by declaring that additional requirements must be met before publication. Ministerial duties have also been inconsistently executed.
4. And finally, a President who could have used his Article II, Section 3 duty under the “Take Care” Clause to order publication of the ERA, thereby ensuring that laws are faithfully executed, decided instead to issue an affirming statement.

These irregularities are all arguably unconstitutional as changes to the constitutional process require changes to the Constitution itself. As this amendment is about sex discrimination which uniquely affects women, the pattern of obstruction throughout the constitutional process reveals what we believe to be an intentional effort to keep women in second-class citizenship and an attempt to obfuscate this intent. The failure of the Biden Administration to see that the Equal Rights Amendment was published is particularly galling given his campaign promises of being pro-ERA and pro-women’s rights, and the fact that he and Harris were aware that it could have protected Roe from being overturned.

Regardless of whether the National Archivist, Coleen Shogun, performed the appropriate ministerial duties or not, the Equal Rights Amendment met the two requirements to be added to the Constitution and is the 28th Amendment to the Constitution and enforceable. According to the DC District Court of Appeals, it dismissed Illinois v. Ferriero in 2021 on grounds that the litigating states did not have standing to claim harm from the Archivist’s failure to publish because the Archivist’s actions have no effect on the ERA’s legal status.

Women were first challenged to get the right to vote without having that Constitutional right, and again with the Equal Rights Amendment that would provide a means to challenge sex discrimination, women have had to deal with barriers being purposely put in place to discourage or stop its passage, ratification, and publication. In both the 19th and the 28th Amendments, women have persevered against all odds through five generations and will continue to be vigilant about their rights. While we understand that the ERA remains formally unpublished by the National Archives, and that only the courts can validate any amendment, we nevertheless feel it is important that it be acknowledged as having met the Constitutional requirements to be added to the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, we are posting a link to the Unabridged U.S. Constitution that includes the 28th amendment. This version is in commemoration of the ratification of The Equal Rights Amendment in 2020, and is being provided by an informal group of women’s rights advocates carrying on the work of their foremothers that started over a century ago.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered, and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

To stay current on The Equal Rights Amendment, you can subscribe to updates at: www.EqualMeansEqual.org,

The Equal Rights Amendment – Final Impact Plan!

Posted on by

What is the ERA? The ERA is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to correct the omission of women. Like all amendments, it required ¾ of the states (38) to ratify it for it to become part of the Constitution. This is the full text:

Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

The ERA was ratified by the 38th state (Virginia) on January 27, 2020. So why isn’t it in the Constitution?  Because first the Trump Administration and then the Biden Administration have unconstitutionally obstructed its being published by the National Archivist, as the Constitution requires.

There are so many reasons why women and girls need the ERA. Let’s review some statistics:

  • Over 4 women a week were murdered in California in 2020
  • Over 298.000 rapes of women were reported in the U.S. in the same year
  • Spousal abuse of women is estimated at 4.8 million every year
  • Approximately 1 million women are stalked annually in the U.S.
  • Over 78% of sexual harassment charges were filed by women between 2018-2021
  • 7 in 10 human trafficking victims are women and girls
  • Over 500,000 cases of female genital mutilation have occurred or are at risk of occurring in the U.S.
  • Abortion rights and birth control are increasingly under attack, risking women’s health and lives
  • Women in every state report injustice in their family law cases, especially battered mothers trying to protect their children from abusive fathers who aggressively litigate against them, using family court to stalk, harass, punish, and impoverish their former partners and children
  • Child marriage is still prevalent in the U.S., 87% of victims of which are girls
  • Women still earn 82 cents to every dollar men earn
  • Single women and mothers with children are the two fastest-growing groups of people experiencing homelessness in the United States

All of this is facilitated and amplified by the fact that women do not have equal standing in the U.S. Constitution.

Attorney Wendy Murphy explains more in this video:

Some History:

The ERA was first introduced into Congress in 1923 as the Lucretia Mott Amendment, shortly after women suffragists won the right to vote. It was always Alice Paul’s and the First Wave feminists’ intent to gain equal standing in the U.S. Constitution following gaining the vote. The ERA languished for decades, however, was rewritten in 1943, and finally passed in its present form in 1972. This was due to the efforts of Paul who seized the moment when the Civil Rights Movement for black people gained ground in order to press for the civil rights of women. It then went to the states for ratification and reached 35 states before the imposed deadline of first 7 years, extended to 10 years, expired in 1982. In 1992, when the 27th amendment was passed after over 202 years, efforts began anew to obtain the last 3 states to ratify in order to reach the ¾ requirement.

Because of the tireless efforts of individual women and especially the organization, Equal Means Equal, Nevada ratified in 2017; Illinois in 2018, and Virginia in 2020, reaching the required 38 states. Instead of being published onto the Constitution by the National Archivist as Article V of the Constitution mandates, however, the Trump Administration unconstitutionally interfered with its publication by writing a memo, known as the Bill Barr Memo, to the National Archivist telling him not to publish because the deadline had passed.  As Archivist, David Ferriero had recorded the ratifications of Nevada and Illinois, but pursuant to the memo from the Office of Legal Counsel in the Trump administration’s Department of Justice, he did not act to publish and certify the ERA after receiving Virginia’s ratification documents in January 2020.

Then after the 2020 election, the Biden Administration continued obstructing its publication and has fought it in court like the Trump Administration did, despite claiming support for the ERA and women’s rights when campaigning. This is especially outrageous considering the fact that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe would not have been possible had the ERA been in the Constitution.

David Ferriero retired in the spring of 2022, and Colleen Shogan was confirmed as his successor as Archivist; she has stated she would publish the ERA if she were told to do so by President Biden. So that is what we need to pressure him to do! We need as many people as possible participating every day in this campaign between now and the election, as that is when we have some leverage and can get some national attention.

Here is our battle plan to finally get the ERA published:

  • CALL: White House Comment Line 202-456-1111 open T-Th 11-3 EST 8-12 PDT
  • TEXT: 310-861-2977 – Harris    302-404-0800 – Biden
  • EMAIL: whitehouse.gov/contact – request a response!
  • HOUND ON SOCIAL MEDIA:    

Twitter accounts: @JoeBiden or @POTUS /@KamalaHarris or @VP  –  Use Hashtags #ERA #EqualRightsAmendment #ERANow!

Sample posts:

 The #EqualRightsAmendment was fully ratified on January 27, 2020 and has been unconstitutionally obstructed by Trump & now by @POTUS and @VP. It is now over 100 years since the #ERA was first introduced into Congress. How long must women wait for equality?!  Make the call, @JoeBiden!

Congress and the American Bar Association @ABAesq have both deemed the #EqualRightsAmendment to be fully ratified. Why are you standing in the way of women’s equality? What are you waiting for @POTUS and @VP?! Call the National Archivist and tell her to publish #ERA, @JoeBiden!

  • Write/call/tweet to senators and congressional representatives in support of HJ Res 82 and SJ Res 39, resolutions to urge the publication of the ERA.  Make it clear that you realize that Congress has already done its job in 1972, and it is Joe Biden’s turn to do his by calling the Archivist and instructing her to publish. Let them know they should be pressuring him directly as it is HIS responsibility, not theirs.  No bill extending the deadline is needed either (nor is it valid).

ADDITIONAL ACTIONS:

  • Take a photo of yourself with an ERA sign with the demand “Make the call Joe!” and upload it to https://finalimpact.org.

For more information see the following videos and articles:

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1mrGmyQqmEVGy or https://t.co/hpWyArF6kn

https://x.com/i/spaces/1jMKgmqrXkyJL

https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/faq/

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/initiatives_awards/era

FIST to host Zoom Forum March 25th on Strategies for Winning Back Abortion Rights

Posted on by

Feminists In Struggle continues its series with a forum on abortion rights: “After Dobbs and the continuing threat to women’s reproductive rights, how do we develop a strategy to regain and secure the right to abortion nationally?”  Tickets on sale now!

FEMINIST FORUM: STRATEGIES FOR WINNING BACK WOMEN’S ABORTION RIGHTS Tickets, Sat, Mar 25, 2023 at 1:00 PM | Eventbrite

Here is our exciting panel of speakers:

Andrea Gabay is a grassroots activist who first volunteered in 2020 while living in New York City. She was an active volunteer doing food drives and composting at GrowNYC environmental program to empower New Yorkers to secure a healthy environment. She also supported many marches throughout NYC, including many BLM movements and was involved with Women’s March in Manhattan. Andrea brought her activist work back with her to San Diego, where she organized a march/rally in January 2023 as part of the national Women’s March.

Wendy Murphy , J.D. is an impact litigator specializing in women’s and children’s civil and constitutional rights. She won landmark Title IX cases against Harvard, Harvard Law, and Princeton between 1992 and 2010 that led to the revolutionary 2011 Dear Colleague letter; and sued the Trump and Biden Administrations in federal court to advance women’s rights. She also won landmark cases to improve privacy rights for women crime victims and testimonial rights for disabled crime victims. She is adjunct professor of sexual violence law and law reform at New England Law Boston where she directs the Women’s and Children’s Advocacy Project under the Center for Law and Social Responsibility. She is well known for her legal advocacy in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.  See our ERA-FIST brochure, “Why We Need the ERA” on which Wendy collaborated, and her book, From Suffrage to Inequality.

Ann Menasche is a San Diego civil rights attorney, grassroots activist, lesbian, and long-time feminist who is a founding member and co-coordinator of the national radical feminist organization, Feminists in Struggle. She is also co-chair of the Green Alliance for Sex-Based RIghts. She has fought for access to safe legal abortion in the years before Roe and in the decades that followed. In the 1980’s she led a landmark case against an anti-abortion center or “fake clinic” for consumer fraud and won. She also helped organize Marches for Women’s Lives in San Francisco that drew tens of thousands of people. Ann was recently fired from her civil rights job for asserting that abortion bans harm women as a sex and has filed a wrongful termination law suit against her previous employer as a result.

JOIN US FOR THIS IMPORTANT DISCUSSION!

Building Hope for the New Year

Posted on by

It’s been a tough year for women’s rights.  We lost abortion rights (even though access had been eroded for years) when the decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health was issued this past June with our reactionary Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and 50 years of precedent to give a green light to states to outlaw abortion.  Now 13 states ban all or virtually all abortions and only 17 states and the District of Columbia broadly protect abortion rights. No doubt, many women’s lives and liberty now hang in the balance.

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has continued to fight in the courts against adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even though already ratified by the requisite 38 states. See Maura Casey’s article, Publish ERA, let skirmishes begin and watch Equal Means Equal’s video: Joe, Do It!

The ERA would establish sex as a protected category, with the same weight as race, which would make it far easier to challenge all kinds of discriminatory practices in every state in the union, including jobs discrimination, violence against women, and yes, abortion bans. See and share our Why We Need the ERA brochure.

And then the coordinated worldwide effort to deny the existence of sex, and to remove sex-based protections including the ability of women to organize against our oppression and to even have language to talk about ourselves, has continued apace in 2022.  California passed two horrific bills this year, SB 923 and SB107 and would respectively indoctrinate the medical and mental health professions in gender identity ideology and make the state a magnet for minors seeking sterilizing and mutilating so-called “gender affirming care.”  See our post about these dangerous bills.

Indoctrination in our schools and universities is endemic.  Feminists are losing jobs and livelihoods and facing civil rights complaints for refusing to deny the existence of two biological sexes. A lesbian in Norway was even facing criminal charges and up to three years in prison for supposed “hate speech” for stating that men could neither be lesbians or mothers.

And most recently, Scotland passed a gender self-ID law, the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, that will allow any male, including convicted sex offenders, to enter women’s spaces and programs simply on his say-so, disregarding concerns about women’s safety.

So, there is plenty of reason to despair.  But there is also reason to hope.

Women can and are fighting back.  Women in Scotland protested and sang a rendition of Auld Lang Syne outside of parliament during the vote, “women’s rights are human rights.”  Their struggle is not over.

Rise-Up for Abortion Rights has done amazing organizing in response to the overturning of Roe.

Two women who challenged their sacking in the UK for their gender critical views were vindicated in court:  Allison Bailey  and Maya Forstater.

Our Duty, a non-partisan group of parents opposing child medical transition, organized a successful “First Do No Harm Unity Rally” of 100 people in Anaheim California in front of a national convention of pediatricians.  The central organizer is a mother, lawyer, and liberal Democrat.  The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the UK has been shuttered following the investigation headed up by Dr. Hilary Cass revealing dangerous invasive procedures being recommended for gender dysphoric youth with little screening or oversight.

And then there are the women of Iran, who are leading a struggle against an extremely repressive and misogynist fundamentalist regime.  In response to the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, in custody of the morals police for not wearing her headscarf properly, and at great risk to themselves, our Iranian sisters have poured out into the streets again and again.

The song, Baraye, has been the anthem of the protests:

For the sake of dancing in the street

For the fear felt in the moment of kissing

For my sister your sister, our sisters

For changing the rotten minds

For shame, for pennilessness

For the yearning for an ordinary life

For the sake of the children that mine the garbage and their dreams…

For women, life, liberty

 

For women, life, liberty!  If they can do it, we can do it!

Happy New Year, sisters!

Report Back on WDI-USA national conference

Posted on by
FIST members attended the the Women’s Declaration International – USA conference , which took place in Washington DC, September 23-25, 2022. The theme and title of the conference was “Reigniting the Women’s Liberation Movement”. The gathering lived up to its “national” title with women having traveled to the conference from across the country; we spoke to women from at least 11 states. Relative to the female population in the U.S., there was good representation of black and brown women (including in the leadership) and a large lesbian contingent. Some of us estimated that 2/3 of us were older and 1/3 were women in their mid-30s or younger. The feeling was very warm and welcoming, it was truly wonderful to share a weekend meeting 100 like-minded women (or so we assumed).
The conference was very well organized, there were back-to-back plenaries and breakouts for a full two days, in addition to the introductory plenary on Friday night, where members of the Board of WDI-USA introduced themselves and the conference–plenaries took place in the dining room so we were able to continue eating and have our dessert even as we took in all of the ideas presented. The food was good and plentiful. Everything ran on time. It took place in a swanky hotel and we sat in a ballroom complete with sparkly chandeliers and white tablecloths.  There were many good presentations with some time for questions afterwards but there was very little actual discussion. Very little exploration of how far our assumed like-mindedness went.
Plenaries included those on the Second Wave of the WLM, Radical Feminist Structural Analysis, Nonviolent mass Action as a strategy for Resistance, the history of feminists “trashing” each other in the women’s movement and strategies to combat it, Women’s writing, Grassroots Organizing, Women in Leadership, Women’s Community, Stories and Land, Ethical Communication, and finally “What Would Victory Look Like?”.

The plenaries were interspersed with smaller breakout sessions on Reproductive Rights, Opposition to the Sex Trade, the Value of Lesbian Only Spaces, Consciousness Raising, Gender and Feminism, Misogynoir (“Black Patriarchy”, facilitated by Black women) and Legislative Advocacy.

Some of our differences became evident during the last session of the conference. as all women in attendance were asked to present their visions of what “victory” would look like. Otherwise differences were not discussed at all; we never touched upon feminists taking money from Christian Nationalists, or the WDI-USA promotion of Women’s Bill of Rights, or their opposition (or at least WoLF’s) to the ERA (see our ERA-FIST brochure) or the WDI statement in opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act or their former work on their Equality for All Act which is a watered-down version of FIST’s Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act or the history of the right wing trying to co-opt feminism through groups such as the Independent Women’s Forum. Nor was there any discussion of how WDI/WDI-USA is funded or how the conference itself was funded.
 
The conference centered on the issue of gender and there was a great sense of relief in being at a large gathering where gender-critical views could be openly discussed. However, it did eclipse other crucial issues, such as the recent catastrophic loss of legal abortion in the U.S.  Reproductive rights and justice was not a major topic at any of the plenaries at which everyone in attendance was present. After the conference, FIST members and other attendees from NY had a discussion about what the place of gender should be in terms of women’s liberation as a whole (we reached no conclusion and consider this an ongoing discussion).
This one meeting might not reignite the Women’s Liberation Movement but it certainly demonstrated that the embers have not burned out. The great deal of warmth and openness—really great spirit—gives us hope for bringing the different “factions” of feminism together on mutually agreed upon campaigns.
Posts to our blog page by Feminist Writer are the opinions of individual FIST members and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Feminists in Struggle organization.  Official posts are authored by Feminist Struggle.

Why We Need the ERA!

Posted on by

The ERA would end women’s second-class citizenship by finally giving women equal standing in the federal CONSTITUTION, thus would ensure women’s equal TREATMENT under all laws, regulations, and policies of state and federal governments.

The ERA would afford women equal treatment under the DUE PROCESS CLAUSE and the EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE, which affect all other rights including everything from obtaining a dog license to the First Amendment, LIBERTY, etc. These fundamental constitutional rights ensure that all people enjoy the most basic freedoms: autonomy, self-determination, authority over the self,  bodily integrity, etc. Without the ERA, women cannot be assured that any rights will apply equally to them.

The ERA would require courts to use strict scrutiny when reviewing claims involving different treatment of women. Without the ERA, courts are allowed to use only intermediate scrutiny, which, unlike strict scrutiny, permits infringements on rights.

The ERA would protect abortion rights and literally save women’s lives by making it clear in the text of the Constitution, for the first time in history, that women are fully equal persons who can no longer be subjected to unequal treatment under any laws, including abortion laws.

The ERA would allow us to fight and reverse any sex discriminatory state or federal law, regulation or policy. The ERA specifically states that the Congress may pass legislation to enforce the ERA, which would mean Civil Rights laws would be amended to ensure women’s equal legal stature. Without the ERA women do not enjoy equal treatment under civil rights laws. For example, aside from employment, women are excluded from Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ERA would fix this

Under the ERA and strict scrutiny, women would still enjoy separate spaces and sex-based preferences that serve a compelling state interest, such as a need to address a history of discrimination.

The ERA would allow women to sue the government for unequal enforcement of rape and domestic violence laws, bias against women in family court, and courts enforcing laws requiring equal pay for women would have to construe the word equal to mean actually equal. Without the ERA courts can interpret laws requiring equal treatment to mean something less than fully equal. The ERA would enable women to assert stronger legal arguments against the commodification of women by surrogacy, pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficking.  

According to Wendy Murphy, attorney for Equal Means Equal, “The ERA is more desperately needed in 2022 than ever before because of Dobbs” (the decision that overturned Roe). “Women’s pervasive status as second-class citizens enabled the Supreme Court to cavalierly take away all personhood rights of pregnant women. Women are literally the lifeblood of this nation, yet they are vulnerable to dystopian court rulings solely because they lack basic equality in the Constitution. The only solution is to fix the Constitution. The ERA does that.”

The ERA was ratified by the 38th state in January of 2020 and is now the law of the land, but, just like the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration is blocking the ERA from being published in the Constitution. Biden is also fighting against the ERA in federal court the same way Trump did.    #PublishERANow!

Four lawsuits are currently pending in NY, MI, RI and DC that seek to validate the ERA. The DC case is scheduled for oral arguments at:

DC Circuit Court of Appeals on September 28th.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: 

  • Come to DC and help us protest Joe Biden’s opposition to Women’s equality. WE DEMAND EQUALITY NOW!!
  • Call/text the White House Comment Line: 800-456-1111
  • Tweet #PublishERANow!  @SCOTUS and @JoeBiden
  • Call your Senators and urge them to demand Biden publish the ERA!!

Distribute our ERA-FIST brochure