ERA Coalition Responds to Virginia AG Ending Support for the Equal Rights Amendment

By ERA Coalition

February 18, 2022

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The ERA Coalition works with more than 300 state, federal, and grassroots partners to advance the cause of women’s equality in the United States, primarily through adding the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and supporting states’ ongoing efforts to ratify the ERA.

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AG Miyares and the Youngkin Administration are turning their backs on the voters of Virginia, who resoundingly support the ratification of the ERA as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.
Carol Jenkins, President and CEO of the ERA Coalition and Fund for Women's Equality

Washington, DC –– Following the news that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has pulled out of the lawsuit against the U.S. Archivist David S. Ferriero to force publication of the ERA to the U.S. Constitution, ERA Coalition / Fund for Women’s Equality President Carol Jenkins issued the following statement:

"AG Miyares and the Youngkin Administration are turning their backs on the voters of Virginia, who resoundingly support the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The ERA has passed every threshold, and it is time for it to be enshrined in the Constitution,” said Jenkins. “Our Constitution–our laws–must reflect that women are equal citizens of this country, and we will not stop fighting until they do.”

The Attorneys General in Nevada and Illinois are continuing with the lawsuit with Ferriero, arguing that he has a duty to publish it to provide official notice to all 50 States that the ERA is now the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

The Equal Rights Amendment has already met all the requirements set by Article V in the Constitution: passage by Congress and ratification by 38 states. On January 27, 2022, the ERA went into effect, two years after Virginia became the 38th and final state to ratify the amendment.

“A Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University survey is clear that, across party lines and demographic groups, a very strong majority of Virginia voters (81%) supported ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment in the 2019 session,” said former state legislator Jennifer Carroll Foy, member of the ERA Coalition Advisory Council. “I was proud to carry and pass the ERA resolution in Virginia in 2020 with the help of so many activists and organizations. Attorney General Jason Miyares' action to withdraw Virginia from the ERA lawsuit is clearly not aligned with the views or values of the majority of Virginians. There is an attack on voting rights and now on women’s rights. Women in Virginia will not allow us to be taken from 2022 back to 1952.”

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The ERA Coalition was founded in 2014 to bring concerted, organized action to the effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA Coalition has a sister organization, the Fund for Women’s Equality, which promotes public education and outreach on the need for constitutional equality. Comprised of nearly 250 organizations across the country, the Coalition provides education and advocacy on Constitutional Equality.

While the effort to amend the constitution to include sex equality began nearly a century ago, our renewed efforts are centered on Black, Indigenous and Women of Color, gender-nonconforming and transgender women and girls, and nonbinary people– those who are most impacted by systemic inequities.
www.eracoalition.org | www.fundforwomensequality.org