![]() And on Wednesday, the measure passed the House of Delegates and the state Senate. In 2019, however, Democrats took control of the legislature for the first time in 20 years. Virginia also tried to ratify the amendment in 2018, but Republicans in the state legislature quashed the effort. “Women are now understanding that none of our fundamental rights are really guaranteed,” she said. ![]() However, things have picked up again in recent years, with Nevada ratifying the amendment in 2017 and Illinois doing so in 2018.įoy says the resurgence of interest stems from a combination of factors like the Women’s March, the Me Too movement, and the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court even after he was publicly accused of sexual assault. Thirty-five states ratified the amendment quickly, but then momentum slowed, in part due to the work of anti-feminist advocates like Phyllis Schlafly in the mid to late 1970s. But because it’s a constitutional amendment, it still had to be ratified by three-quarters of the states, or 38 out of 50. First introduced in 1923, it passed Congress with bipartisan support in 1972. Section 3: This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.īut these few words have been wending their way through American politics for nearly 100 years, as Vox’s Emily Stewart writes. Section 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 1: Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. It’s just the beginning of another fight. “Women are fed up,” she said, “and we’re now in positions of power.” Virginia ratified the ERA. But Foy believes that, now more than ever, there’s momentum in Virginia and around the country for enacting a constitutional change that’s been decades in the making. However, there are still major legal and political hurdles to clear in order for the amendment to officially become law. And on January 15, 2020, Virginia became the 38th state, with the ERA passing both houses of the state legislature. To become law, the amendment must be ratified by 38 states. Now, in 2020, she’s the sponsor of a measure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which would ban discrimination on the basis of sex, enshrining in the US Constitution the principle of gender equality that Ginsburg argued for in United States v. She went on to become an attorney and, in 2017, one of a historic number of women elected to the Virginia House of Delegates. ![]() They both went to the military college, but only Foy graduated - one of the first black women to do so. “I told him, ‘Challenge accepted,’” Foy recalls. Her male best friend even came up to her and told her that if she went to VMI, he would go too, because “I want to be there to watch you when you fail.” In a famous majority opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court found that the previously all-male Virginia Military Institute - a prestigious military college in Foy’s home state - would have to admit women.įoy agreed with the decision, but the boys in the class were outraged, she told Vox. Her class was watching TV coverage of the historic 1996 Supreme Court decision United States v. ![]() For Jennifer Carroll Foy, the fight against sexism started in high school.
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