Biden wildly declares ERA is now ‘law of the land’

Bizarre end-of-term actions also include pardoning another 2,500 convicted criminals In just a single term, Biden has now issued more pardons and commutations than any other president in history.

Friday, January 17, 2025

President Biden has declared the Equal Rights Amendment to be officially ratified, saying it should be considered the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

But the National Archives, which serves as the official keeper of the document, quickly rejected that notion, saying courts and even Mr. Biden’s own Justice Department have said the ERA is dead in its current form.

The issue is whether 38 states have officially ratified the 52-year-old amendment.

Mr. Biden said Friday that he thinks they have, in a declaration three days before President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated. Mr. Trump’s first administration sided with those who said the amendment was not properly ratified.

“It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. 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,” he said.

Three of the 38 ratifications, though, came after the deadline Congress set. And courts have upheld the deadlines as valid.

The National Archives said Friday that Mr. Biden’s declaration doesn’t change “the underlying legal and procedural issues.” It pointed back to a statement last month saying the Archivist won’t go against court rulings.

“Court decisions at both the district and circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid. Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment,” the agency’s leaders said at the time.

In a speech later Friday. Mr. Biden said he felt he was on solid ground.

“I consulted dozens of constitutional scholars to make sure it was all within the power to do this,” he said.

Mr. Biden’s ERA move was part of a flurry of last-minute executive actions by the lame-duck president. The drug cartels will be happy to know that he also issued clemency in 2,500 narcotics convictions.

By doing so, Biden had issued more individual pardons and commutations than any other president, which was kicked off with the 10 year pardon of son Hunter Biden for any crimes he committed or may have committed (and thus pardoned himself of any complicity in his son’s crimes).

Congress approved the ERA in 1972, sending it to the states to see if it could get the three-fourths needed for ratification. The initial law proposing the amendment to the states set a seven-year deadline.

By 1979, though, just 35 states had ratified, short of the 38 needed.

Congress approved a three-year extension of the deadline, but no new states ratified.

Decades later, ERA backers said they had decided the deadlines were invalid.

They wrangled new ratifications from Nevada in 2017, Illinois in 2018 and Virginia in 2020.

Backers then sued to try to get the courts to order the Archives to recognize the amendment. But courts have consistently rejected those efforts, saying the deadlines were valid.

There’s also the problem that a handful of states that voted to ratify the amendment have since voted to rescind those approvals.

ERA backers argue that post-deadline ratifications should be counted, while revocations—even those that happened within the original deadline—should be ignored.

Supporters say it will strip away the remaining vestiges of sex discrimination. Opponents say the law, and court decisions, already require equality. They see the ERA as a backdoor attempt to enshrine abortion rights in all the states.

There are also questions about whether the amendment would cover LGBT rights. When the amendment was approved by Congress in the 1970s, transgender issues were nowhere to be found in the debate — but they were prominent when Virginia held its ratifying debates in 2020.

That would make it trickier for courts to discern the extent of the amendment’s protections, if it ever were to become part of the Constitution.

No less an authority than the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the ERA, at least the version from 1972, was dead. She suggested ERA backers needed to start again.

That’s a daunting prospect, however, given the politics of Capitol Hill and reticence in GOP-led states.

Legal complications aside, ERA backers hailed Mr. Biden’s announcement.

“This is a moment of historic importance,” said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat.

Conservatives, meanwhile, said Mr. Biden’s attempt was “simply wrong.”

“Biden’s statement has no legal force,” said Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots Action. “It is nothing more than a last-ditch attempt to woo certain elements of the American body politic. Like so much of what he has attempted, it, too, will fail.”

Sources: The Washington Times, Daily Caller; Alpha News