ERA - questions

Factual Questions
1

I have some questions on the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment).

There is another thread in which ERA was brought up. I haven’t thought of the ERA in awhile and I thought it was dead in the water. It turns out, it looks like it has a good possibility of passing.

Questions…If it passes:

What exactly does the ERA do? Does it force the government to treat men and women the same?

What does the ERA offer women that they do not have and what, if any, duties will be shouldered that they do not already have? For example of duties, if there is a draft, will women have to be drafted. Will it affect child custody cases?

I am completely ignorant in this manner. Please rectify. :slight_smile:

2

What the ERA does is impose a requirement that is otherwise utterly undefined. There is a lot of definition that exists in current legislation and caselaw, but it doesn’t have explicit Constitutional imprimis beyond “equal protection” and “due process”. Right now, the government can make “sexual discrimination” a secondary concern, depending on the circumstance. If the ERA is ratified, then it becomes a primary concern and must be held equally as important as “due process” or “equal protection” in general.

I now must go and count dancing angels on my pinhead collection.

3

This is why people that post incorrect information in response to GQs should be required to loose a finger.

I don’t slam you by this comment, andymurphy64, because of course the person posting a question doesn’t know the answer.

I refer instead to the execrable infomration posted by Susanann in the thread I suspect gave you this idea.

Please re-read that thread; the subsequent posts put the lie to Susanann’s daft idea that only two more states need ratify the amendment, and Congress pass an extension, for the ERA to become law. As was made clear in that thread, the matter is far from clear, and the only case law extant is a federal district court that ruled Congress could not legally pass the original three-year extension.

This does not invalidate the “what if it passes” questions that you ask, but I hope it puts a more realistic assessment in pace as to the possibility of that event.

  • Rick
4

Er… “lose” a finger.

Although, in fairness to me, the finger would then be on the loose. :slight_smile:

5

Not to slam you Bricker…

Please refrain from making comments in GQ unless you can actually answer the question.

I’ve had it with this place. This is the most closed, anti-social, in-bred, message board community I’ve ever visited.

I’ve given this place a year of visiting from time to time and have never felt comfortable here.

Bye.

6

Huh? Gee, Bricker was merely correcting the ignorance your OP clearly demonstrated. Seems like a weird thing to get offended by, especially in a forum explicitly dedicated to the amelioration of ignorance. If this is consistent with the content of your other posts I, for one, won’t miss you.

–Cliffy

7

I’m sorry that my post had such an effect on you.

I tried to make it clear that I was in no way criticizing you; you took from Susanann’s post in the other thread the idea that the ERA was close to passage, and offered that as a statement of fact in your OP.

I agree that useless, off-topic posts have no home in GQ, and that generally, a poster should respond only if they can answer the question. But there is another circumstance in which GQ posters may - indeed, SHOULD - respond: the presence of an error in the OP or in an answering post. This is what I did.

If you took my post to be any sort of negative commentary at you, I most humbly apologize; that was not the intent. But I did think it was important to put the error that Susanann started to rest before it took on a life of its own.

  • Rick
8

There are many great minds, and many constitutional scholars who think the ERA is alive, and only needs 2 more states.

Perhaps it may go to the next supreme court, after the new president selects a few new supreme court members.

I never heard of Bricker arguing a case before the Supreme Court, perhaps he thinks he is smarter than the Supreme Court and the lawyers who go before it. I am not even sure the current members of the Supreme Court are so sure that the ERA is dead, as is Bricker.

Perhaps Bricker is much smarter than our Supreme Court? I am guessing that Bricker is predicting a 9-0 Supreme Court decision in not allowing ratification of a constitutional ammendment which was ratified by the necessary 3/4 ths of our states, but I am not sure he is taking/guaranteeing bets on a 9-0 decision.

I am not predicting what the supreme court will do, esp since I dont know who will be president in 2004, and I dont know which judges she/he will choose to be on the court.

We know that several members of the supreme court will retire in the next few years, and that the new president will select their replacements. For Bricker, or anyone else, to predict what the new supreme court will decide before even knowing who the new court is comprised of, is not speaking responsibly. No one in the world today can predict what a court which has not been selected yet will do.

The only probablilities, is that it is more likely than not that eventually Florida(after Jeb bush leaves) and Nevada will eventually ratify the ERA, then taking it to the final step of going before the Supreme Court if anyone does formally complain of women finally getting equal rights.

Furthermore, a supreme court decision negating the ERA, after 3/4th s of the states ratified the ammendment, might create a backlash and an upheaval so great that a reintroduction of the ERA would sail thru all the states. Eg, the Dred Scott supreme court decision of 1857, did not result in slavery being in america forever. In fact, some might venture that the Dred Scott decision actually helped blacks get equal rights and put an end to slavery rather quickly after that unpopular and questionable supreme court decision.

Lastly, you might also ask, if any member of the supreme court wants to be remembered in his supreme court career forever as being the judge who prevented women from getting equal rights. For a supreme court judge to want to be remembered as someone who denied women equal rights, as well as being a judge who denied a consitutional ammendment from taking effect after being ratified by the necessary 3/4ths of the states, is grasping at straws.

"By transferring time limits from the text of an amendment to the proposing clause, Congress retained for itself the authority to review the limit and to amend its own previous legislative action regarding that time limit.

In 1978, Congress clearly demonstrated its belief that it may alter a time limit in the proposing clause when it passed an extension of the original seven-year limit for ERA ratification and moved the deadline from March 22, 1979, to June 30, 1982. "

“under the principles of Dillon and Coleman, and based on the fact that Congress voted to extend the ERA time limit and to accept the 203-year-long ratification period of the Madison Amendment as sufficiently “contemporaneous,” it is likely that Congress has the power to legislatively adjust or remove the time limit constraint on the ERA if it chooses, to determine whether or not state ratifications which occur after the expiration of a time limit in a proposing clause are valid, and to promulgate the ERA after the 38th state ratifies.”
http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/viability.htm

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/analysis.htm

9

Susanann:

  1. I agree that the state of the law is unsettled, and said as much. You asserted that it was a given that only two more states and Congressional action were needed. Which of us is wrong?

  2. Would you care to address the reasoning in Idaho v. Freeman?

  3. The Supreme Court mooted Freeman in NOW v. Idaho. When it did so, it declared that since the ten-year limit had passed with no ratification, the amendment was dead. This ruling effectively conceded that, regardless of whether Congress could have acted to extend the amendment before, they lost their chance when the amendment expired. You might want to address that piece of jurisprudence as well.

  4. I am quoting ACTUAL CASE LAW. You are offering two cites from the same website, one that appears to have a certain bias. Moreover, even the language you quote acknowledges this uncertainty: “…it is likely that Congress has the power to legislatively adjust or remove the time limit constraint on the ERA if it chooses…” (emphasis mine).

Again - if you wish to DEBATE the proposition, there’s a forum for that. In GQ, the most you can say with regards to a factual answer is that the law is unsettled - which I said.

  • Rick
10

By the way - your “backlash” scenario has absolutely zip to do with the subject under discussion. Of course I agree that Congress may re-introcuce the amendment, and if three-fourths of the states ratify it, it’s a doen deal. That’s NOT what we’re talking about. Nor is there any relevance in a 9-0 decision; a 5-4 decision is equally binding and equally good law.

The fact remains that the issue is justicable, and that the ONLY FEDERAL COURT TO RULE ON IT has decided adversely to you. That means: against you.

  • Rick
11

There is much relevence to the difference between a 9-0 decision, and a 5-4 decision.

A 9-0 decision is not equal to a 5-4 decision. They may be both binding, for a time anyway, but they are not equal.

Either you dont know math, or you have no respect at all for the 4 Supreme Court judges who vote no.

A 9-0 decision means that the court is more likely to be right, they are in universal agreement, no minority opinions, no real doubt(nor hope for the loser) of the matter in the final analysis.

A 5-4 decision means that 4 experienced constitutional law Supreme Court Justices think the decision is wrong!

If 4 Supreme Court Justices, after many months of study and thought, think totally the other way, you cant be so obstantate that it is perfectly clear to anyone with a rudimentary knowedge of the situation that the 4 judges are wrong.

Anyways, I predict that we will find out what happens in a few years. States are continuing to consider the matter, it is not a dead issue in all legislatures.

Those of you who thought ending slavery was a dead issue in 1857, and those of you who think the ERA is now a dead issue, may be surprised.

12

Would you care to address the reasoning in Idaho v. Freeman?

I think it’s the third time I’ve asked this, and you are studiously ignoring it.

You now appear to concede that the state of the law is unsettled, however, and that’s really all that’s necessary for GQ.