Nevada is about to do something no state has done in 3½ decades: Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
Dusting off a decades-old debate about whether to enshrine women’s rights in the Constitution is of questionable value to the amendment’s prospects, say analysts. But that doesn’t mean it’s a meaningless gesture, and its revival certainly says a lot about the women’s rights movement in 2017.
Even if Nevada becomes the 36th state to ratify the amendment, its entry into the Constitution is a long shot. The deadline to ratify the amendment ended long ago — in 1982 to be exact. And even if Congress reopened it, it’s not clear any other state is seriously interested in playing along.
Republicans, who have traditionally been opposed to the amendment, control a majority of state governments and Congress.
But the fact that we’re even talking about the Equal Rights Amendment decades after it was left for dead underscores the somewhat-surprising political activism of women and their allies across the country right now, said Debbie Walsh, director of the nonpartisan Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University. Women are getting involved politically in a way the nation hasn’t seen since the feminism movement of the ’60s and ’70s, she added.
Nevada Democrats swam against the Republican tide last November and managed to recapture both state legislative chambers. Its leaders now view their state — one of just 14 where Democrats control the state legislature — as a counterweight to a conservative Washington.
“I get giddy every time I think about the fact we have such a great opportunity in this state,” Senate Majority Leader Aaron Ford (D-Nev.) told The Fix in January.
A quick history/civics recap: Changing the Constitution is one of the most difficult things in all of governing, but Equal Rights Amendment supporters have come tantalizing close. In 1972, after a decade or so of debate, Congress passed it and sent it to the states for ratification. (Under one process to change or add a constitutional amendment, 38 states — or three-quarters — must ratify it, whether via their legislatures or a state convention.)
Congress gave the states an entire decade for 38 states to get that done. In the end, 35 did.
The amendment has been introduced in Congress off and on ever since, but it fell flat. States haven’t bothered to touch it.
Until now. The Democratic-controlled Nevada State Senate passed it mostly along party lines on Wednesday. The Democratic-controlled State Assembly will pick it up from there, where it’s expected to sail through on party lines.
“It’s like a no-brainer. Equal Rights Amendment,” said state Nevada Sen. Pat Spearmen (D), the author of the bill. “Equal rights. That’s what it is. It’s just equal rights.”
Nevada’s governor is a Republican, and he hasn’t commented on the amendment. But Democrats in Nevada say the parliamentary logistics of this mean the legislation doesn’t need Gov. Brian Sandoval’s signature.
Most Republicans in the state legislature aren’t impressed. Their objections to the amendment in 2017 are similar to objections in the ’70s and ’80s: It could require women to enlist in the draft. It’s not necessary. It’s symbolic.
“An equal rights amendment that doesn’t have exclusions to protect families is something I can’t support,” state Sen. Beck Harris, a Republican and the sole woman to vote against the amendment, told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
Maybe Nevada’s ratification of the amendment will amount to just symbolism, Spearman said. But symbols can be powerful too.
“It’s imperative because people around the country and, yes, even some people around the world are questioning America’s commitment to diversity and equality,” Spearman said. “I believe that in 25, 30, even 53 years from now, I do think we will have the Equal Rights Amendment. I really do.”