ERA in 2024: Let’s Get This Show on the Road!
I hope by now everyone is familiar with the push to add the Federal Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S.Constitution this year. Not by next decade, or even next year, but in 2024.
If you’re not familiar, you can look up the details at the Sign4ERA website.
This federal ERA initiative is distinct from Proposition One, New York State’s ERA. The state ERA was described in a guest column by Mickey Belosi, Vice Chair of CNY NOW, in last month’s DASH.
Even with only three months left in 2024, we can make the federal ERA happen by recruiting enough members of the House of Representatives to bring House Joint Resolution 25 to the floor for a vote. If it passes, the ERA becomes the 28th Amendment.
Of course, there’s a catch. We need 218 signatures from voting House members to begin the process. To date we have 214. To reach the goal, we’re going to need to reach across the aisle.
And that’s where four New York Republicans, including our own congressman, Marc Molinaro, come in.
As constituents, we have a right to ask our elected representatives to support initiatives close to our hearts. I hope everyone reading this will go to Molinaro’s website (molinaro.house.gov), click on the Contact button and urge him to sign Discharge Petition #6 to bring ERA House Resolution 25 to the floor for a vote this session. Please ask friends and relatives who live in New York’s 19th congressional district to do the same. Write team@Sign4ERA.org if you have questions.
Then, if you are free Tuesday, September 3 at 5:30 p.m., join members of the Sign4ERA petition drive at the Tompkins County Library to sign the national petition, which reads:
I strongly support the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution as the 28th Amendment which is:
Section One: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Section Two: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Such simple statements, to have taken so long to write into law. And as the Dobbs decision repealing Roe v. Wade and the release of Project 2025 show us, they are still needed—perhaps now more than ever.
Sincerely,
Linda Hoffmann, Chair
Tompkins County Democratic Committee