Social and Behavioral Science
119 Educating and Engaging Youth about the Equal Rights Amendment Through Legislative Advocacy
Tiffany Chan
Faculty Mentor: James Curry (Political Science, University of Utah)
Introduction
As a community organizer and a relentless advocate for social justice, I realized early on that gender issues would be deeply ingrained in my activism. As a woman of color, I was exposed to the ugly truths of gender gaps and forms of prejudice and discrimination perpetuated by sexists, misogynists, and male chauvinists. It was already burdensome to bear the brunt of these behaviors, but it’s more challenging when there’s no legal guarantee within the Constitution for a fundamental legal remedy against sex discrimination by guaranteeing that constitutional rights may not be denied or abridged on account of sex.
When the U.S. Constitution was adopted in 1787, the rights it affirmed were guaranteed equally only for certain white males. After intense political battles and a bloody civil war, those rights have been extended far more broadly through constitutional amendments, laws, and court decisions for race and other protected classes. However, all of those rights are not yet guaranteed to apply equally without regard to sex. The first — and still the only — right that the U.S. Constitution specifically affirms and applies equally to women and men is the right to vote. The equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment was first applied to sex discrimination only in 1971, and according to the Equal Rights Amendment website, it has never been interpreted to grant equal rights on the basis of sex in a uniform and inclusive way (“Why We Need the Equal Rights Amendment”).
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. It is necessary because the Constitution has never been interpreted to guarantee the rights of women as a class, and the rights of men as a class, to be equal. It seeks to end the legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. For the first time, sex would be considered a suspect classification, as race, religion, and national origin currently are. Governmental actions that treat males or females differently as a class would be subject to strict judicial scrutiny and would have to meet the highest level of justification – a necessary relation to a compelling state interest – to be upheld as constitutional (“Why We Need the Equal Rights Amendment”). The ERA would guarantee “Equal Justice Under Law,” as inscribed over the entrance to the Supreme Court, and send a strong preemptive warning against writing, enforcing, or adjudicating laws unfairly on the basis of sex.
The ERA would provide a clearer judicial standard for deciding cases of sex discrimination. Not every state in the U.S. has ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, and therefore federal and state courts are inconsistent