Democrats Try a Novel Tactic to Revive the Equal Rights Amendment
Democrats Try a Novel Tactic to Revive the Equal Rights Amendment
Proponents of the measure to enshrine a guarantee of sex equality into the Constitution are using a creative legal theory to try to resurrect the long-stalled amendment.
While almost 80 percent of Americans supported adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in a 2020 Pew Research Center poll, there is little chance that the effort will draw the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Sums up the current GOP pretty well. 80% of the country want something? Too bad, they’ll block it.
After the election year they should kill kill the filibuster, provided (sane) democrats have a majority. Then they can spend 4 years fixing the courts, passing legislation like this, and solving gerrymandering.
Of course, it will never happen, but one can dream.
They can just revert the Filibuster to its original purpose. It was intended to make sure debate on a topic wasn't cut off prematurely. This notion that a supermajority was needed to get anything done was a recent thing.
You can keep the Filibuster if you want, but make sure it's solely for the purpose of debating a topic. If a minority wants to Filibuster, they should continue to speak, Jimmy Stewart style. None of this "we don't have the votes to close debate, so let's do something else instead" that we have now. If you don't have the votes to close debate, continue debating!
I would be interested in seeing how this plays out. I never really understood the opposition to amendment like this especially by women. It is kind of a strange part of US history where women were convincing other women to vote on an amendment that enshrines women equal rights. Just an odd part of US history
It's not the worst idea as political stunts go. I think they'd be better served by simply trying to pass the amendment again. We could probably do with a few amendments that are unlikely to pass because of our current divisions. The campaign to pass them could help with that, while maybe doing some good down the road.