Women’s Rights

Illinois Senate votes to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment

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In 2017, the state of Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. 38 states are required for ratification.

While the Arizona House voted to recess rather than debate the ERA this week, the Illinois Senate voted to ratify the ERA. Illinois Senate approves federal Equal Rights Amendment, more than 35 years after the deadline:

The Illinois Senate on Wednesday voted to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, renewing a push from decades ago amid the #MeToo movement to guarantee that rights can’t be denied because of a person’s sex.

The vote came about 36 years after the amendment appeared to die after just 35 states ratified it, three short of what was needed by the 1982 deadline. That means Illinois’ approval could be largely symbolic. Still, advocates have pushed for a “three-state solution,” contending Congress can extend the deadline and the amendment should go into effect if three additional states vote in favor.

Note: First enacted in 1972 by Congress, the ERA legislation required that the measure be ratified by three-fourths of the states (38) within seven years. That deadline was later extended 10 years to 1982. There was federal court litigation over the deadline extension at the time. But the U.S. Constitution contains no time limit for ratification of constitutional amendments. In fact, subsequent to the ERA the 27th Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting immediate congressional pay raises was ratified 203 years after its introduction. This called into question the soundness of  earlier federal court decisions on the ERA deadline. It is still a contested legal issue. Congress can also vote to remove the deadline language, and a bill has been introduced to do so.

The amendment passed on a vote of 43-12, with no debate on the Senate floor. It now heads to the House, where sponsoring Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, says he is working to build support but warned it’s far from a “slam-dunk.” The House and Senate each have voted in favor in the past, but it has yet to clear both in the same year.

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GOP legislators reject equal rights for women, because abortion (Updated)

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This week Arizona’s GOP legislators reaffirmed, once again, that they believe women are second-class citizens who do not enjoy the full panoply of rights that white men do (they’re not convinced that men who are minorities do either), because abortion.

Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley
Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley proposes the Equal Rights Amendment.

On Tuesday, Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley (D-Tucson), for the second year in a row, attempted to use a procedural maneuver to bring up a bill for debate on approving the Equal Rights Amendment. And for the second year in a row, white men moved to adjourn the House rather than debate the bill and take a vote.

The Republic reports, On Equal Pay Day, Arizona Republicans block vote on Equal Rights Amendment:

Democrats in the Arizona Legislature fell short Tuesday in their attempt to force a vote on ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.

For the second consecutive year, they failed to persuade Republicans to allow debate on the ERA — a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that broadly guarantees equal rights between men and women.

State Rep. Pamela Powers Hannley, D-Tucson, tried to use a procedural move to bring an ERA resolution to a vote in the House of Representatives, but the House adjourned before that could happen.

Hannley said she chose Tuesday to push the issue because it marks Equal Pay Day, the day on the calendar when the average American woman’s earnings catch up to what a male peer earned in 2017.

Nationally, women earn about 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. In Arizona, women earn about 82 cents for every dollar.

‘No time limit on equality’

“Arizona women want equal pay for equal work,” Hannley told fellow lawmakers. “Let’s make history. There is no time limit on equality.”

But Majority Leader John Allen, R-Scottsdale, intervened to prevent a vote on Powers Hannley’s motion. His motion to recess the chamber for the day passed 32-25, along party lines.

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Authoritarian Tea-Publicans reject the constitutional right of Arizona citizens to enact a minimum wage law

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Authoritarian Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature reject the constitutional right of Arizona citizens to make their own laws by citizens initiative. Like Louis XIV of France, they believe “I am the state,” and that you are the unwashed rabble who are mere subjects who should bow down before them.

They are also the tools of corporate plutocrats, i.e., the Arizona chambers of commerce organizations, and in particular, the Arizona Restaurant Association, the most vocal opponent of the minimum wage and paid time off leave. The ARA would bring back indentured servitude if not for the Thirteenth Amendment.

In 2016, Arizona voters overwhelmingly approved a Minimum Wage Initiative that also allowed local governments to enact paid time off leave policies. The chamber of commerce organizations and their lickspittle Tea-Publican servants in the Arizona legislature will not stand for this. They want to stomp out this citizens-created law, despite the Voter Protection Act.

Two Tea-Publican members of the Arizona Legislature think voters should reconsider parts of the minimum-wage ballot measure they passed overwhelmingly less than two years ago. Proposals to roll back Arizona’s minimum-wage ballot measure protested at Capitol:

A pair of resolutions are moving through the Legislature that together would make major changes, including: freezing the minimum wage and stopping further scheduled increases to it; eliminating mandatory sick leave; repealing provisions regarding employer retaliation; and prohibiting cities from having a higher minimum wage than is set by the state.

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#MeToo Movement revisits Clarence Thomas: a case for impeachment

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The #MeToo movement has begun to hold powerful men who have abused women accountable for their actions. Many of these men have engaged in such behavior for decades, as the Harvey Weinstein case illustrates.

This has led Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times and the co-author of Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, a 1994 book about his controversial confirmation hearing, to revisit the issue in the current cover story of New York Magazine. Do You Believe Her Now?: With new evidence that Clarence Thomas lied to get onto the Supreme Court, it’s time to talk seriously about impeachment:

On the same fall night in 2016 that the infamous Access Hollywood tape featuring Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault was made public by the Washington Post and dominated the news, an Alaska attorney, Moira Smith, wrote on Facebook about her own experiences as a victim of sexual misconduct in 1999.

“At the age of 24, I found out I’d be attending a dinner at my boss’s house with Justice Clarence Thomas,” she began her post, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court justice who was famously accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill, a woman who had worked for him at two federal agencies, including the EEOC, the federal sexual-harassment watchdog.

“I was so incredibly excited to meet him, rough confirmation hearings notwithstanding,” Smith continued. “He was charming in many ways — giant, booming laugh, charismatic, approachable. But to my complete shock, he groped me while I was setting the table, suggesting I should ‘sit right next to him.’ When I feebly explained I’d been assigned to the other table, he groped again … ‘Are you sure?’ I said I was and proceeded to keep my distance.” Smith had been silent for 17 years but, infuriated by the “Grab ’em by the pussy” utterings of a presidential candidate, could keep quiet no more.

Tipped to the post by a Maryland legal source who knew Smith, Marcia Coyle, a highly regarded and scrupulously nonideological Supreme Court reporter for The National Law Journal, wrote a detailed story about Smith’s allegation of butt-squeezing, which included corroboration from Smith’s roommates at the time of the dinner and from her former husband. Coyle’s story, which Thomas denied, was published October 27, 2016. If you missed it, that’s because this news was immediately buried by a much bigger story — the James Comey letter reopening the Hillary Clinton email probe.

Smith, who has since resumed her life as a lawyer and isn’t doing any further interviews about Thomas, was on the early edge of #MeToo. Too early, perhaps: In the crescendo of recent sexual-harassment revelations, Thomas’s name has been surprisingly muted.

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2nd Annual Women’s March this weekend (updated)

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The 2018 Women’s March in Washington will move forward as planned on Saturday despite a pending government shutdown. Women’s March Will Go On, Shutdown or Not:

An estimated 5,500 marchers will gather at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool at 11 a.m. for a series of speeches before winding their way east down Constitution Avenue and north to the White House gates to advocate for women’s inclusion in the political process.

The Reflecting Pool, which runs down the western end of the National Mall, is maintained by the National Park Service.

Womensmarch_BC_235_012117-1

A shutdown would furlough roughly 87 percent of the nearly 25,000 National Park Service employees until Congress can pass a spending measure to put them back to work.

All over the country, parks and monuments under NPS jurisdiction would be closed to visitors until Congress reaches a spending deal.

But the bureau has issued a “special provision … for first amendment activities in the National Mall and Memorial Parks” to carry on during a shutdown, according to a “contingency plan” outlined last September.

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