The ERA has been ratified.

The front cover of the biography Alice Paul: Claiming Power by J. D. Zahniser & Amelia R. Fry

It’s time the federal government admits it.

Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) nearly one hundred years ago, in 1923. (Yes, I know it’s disturbing to realize that 1923 was a hundred years ago. I remember when “a hundred years ago” referred to the Victorian era.) The ERA passed in the Senate in 1972… and misogynistic lawmakers who didn’t want it to pass gave it a bogus deadline of seven years. This is not a requirement for passing amendments. One amendment had a whole two hundred years and passed.

As Ms. Magazine spells out, Congress never had the authority to put a deadline on the ERA. We’ve met the requirements, period.

Here’s a link to the Ms. blog article to which I refer:

There's a Way to Add the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution-And We Did It - Ms. Magazine

Of course, the U. S. Constitution needs to be… replaced with a new constitution. One that isn’t by eighteenth-century cishet white male slaveowners. Other countries have twentieth-century constitions that are relevant to the present day, not relics of another time. But for now, we need to pass the ERA.