Commentary like this is why I hate to miss Chris Hayes on MSNBC. Here he goes off on the manly men of MAGA.
Today President Biden released a statement saying that the Equal Rights Amendment did eventually receive enough votes to be ratified and ought to be considered part of the Constitution. If he were going to do this I wish he’d done it sooner, particularly when there was a Dem majority in the Senate. The original amendment had a time limit for getting enough states for ratification, and that deadline passed decades ago. This article from the Brennan Center explains that this probably means the only way to get the ERA into the Constitution is to start over again.
It's a bit complicated, because there's no mention of time limits in the Constitution, and, no mention that Congress can limit the rights of the states to ratify an amendment – I *think*.
There's no role for courts in the amendment process, but the Republicans would now be forced to say they are disregarding the ERA, "on the record" so to speak.
Regardless, if I understand it, there is a strong legal argument that the ERA is now the law of the land. Not a *perfect* one, but a strong one, and if a Democratic President used it as the basis for executive orders, the courts may have to avoid challenging the amendment itself, since there’s no role for the courts in the amendment process.