Is the Equal Rights Amendment “the law of the land”?

President Joe Biden declared last Friday that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is the “law of the land.” Is this true? What is the ERA? And should we be concerned about what it might mean for each of us?

The Amendment was drafted in the 1970s to prohibit discrimination based on gender, guaranteeing men and women equal rights under the law. It was sent by Congress to the states for ratification in 1972, with a deadline of 1979 for three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify it. That deadline was later extended to 1982.

Nearly forty years later, in 2020, Virginia lawmakers voted to ratify the amendment, meaning that the necessary thirty-eight states had done so. Of course, this was long after the deadline had expired. Congress tried in 2023 to lift the amendment to allow for the amendment’s ratification, but the measure failed in the Senate after it didn’t reach the required sixty-vote threshold.

In addition, five states have since rescinded their approval. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a longtime supporter of the ERA, stated in 2020 that the deadline to ratify the measure had passed and that the effort must start anew. “I would like to see a new beginning,” she told an audience at Georgetown University Law Center.

The director of the National Archives is responsible for certifying and publishing new amendments once they meet the ratification threshold required by law. Last month, the US archivist and deputy archivist stated that the ERA could not be certified without further action by Congress or the courts.

On the other side of the debate, the American Bar Association has stated that “no time limit was included in the text of the Equal Rights Amendment.” This is true: the limit is part of the amendment’s preamble. However, Congress approved the preamble along with the amendment itself.

There’s much more to the story, as this complex blog from the National Constitution Center demonstrates.

The power of the “bully pulpit”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and others have encouraged Mr. Biden to certify the ERA over the archivist’s objections. His speech last Friday was apparently in response to their efforts. However, a senior Biden administration official said the president was not directing the archivist to certify the amendment.

This is appropriate since the US president has no role in the constitutional amendment process. He does, however, have an enormous national role to play by virtue of what President Theodore Roosevelt called his “bully pulpit.” 

This article illustrates that power: I have never written on the ERA before and had no plans to do so before Mr. Biden’s speech.

Most Americans see our president primarily through the lens of his public speeches, as Donald Trump’s January 20 inaugural address obviously illustrates. However, the president is also our nation’s chief diplomat. His words in public and in private can be vital to geopolitical progress and even the conduct of war.

And he can be our “connector-in-chief, as many have described Franklin D. Roosevelt with regard to his “fireside chats” and other public addresses during the Great Depression and World War II. 

This is as our Founders intended. The Speaker of the House is responsible to the House; the Senate Majority Leader is responsible to the Senate. Governors are responsible to their states, mayors to their cities, and school board members to their school boards. Only the president and vice-president are elected by the entire nation. Only the president has the platform and power to speak to and for all Americans.

While the Founders feared unaccountable power and thus instituted checks and balances on the president’s authority, they nonetheless recognized the urgency and virtue of a singular leader in the service of a flourishing nation.

The peril of two presidents

The same principle holds for other dimensions of life. Co-CEOs are seldom effective in leading companies. Athletic teams are typically led by a single head coach or manager. Effective churches are almost always led by effective senior pastors. In most of life, we recognize the importance of a single leader, wherever such leadership is needed.

Why, then, do we think we can co-chair our souls?

We obviously recognize the need for a Savior to forgive our sins and save us from hell. We also recognize the value of his omniscience when we need direction, his omnipotence when we need strength, and his omnibenevolence when we need encouragement.

But apart from such times of need, we’d rather lead our own lives. Faith can be our spare tire or parachute, but we want to be in charge so far and so long as we can be.

If only we recognized that such self-sufficiency usually causes the problems for which we then turn to God for help. If only we understood that his omniscient will is so much better than ours (cf. Isaiah 55:8–9), that his plans for us are far superior to our own (Jeremiah 29:11), and that he loves us more fully and more capably than we can love ourselves (cf. 1 John 4:8, 19).

But our fallen nature, with its inherent “will to power,” wants to be its own god (Genesis 3:5) and get the credit wherever it can. Every night, we crawl back up onto the throne of our own hearts and must dethrone ourselves every morning as a result. We must submit our lives and our day to the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), saying to him, “You lead, I follow.” And we must stay off that throne across the day.

When he is our “president,” the one speaking to us and through us, our “nation” thrives. When we have two presidents, we have none.

Who is the president of your soul right now?