Surprise! We have a 28th amendment?
Pharyngula 2025-01-17
As Joe Biden was getting his coat and leaving the White House, he has announced that he has ratified the equal rights amendment! Just like that! He can do that? What took him so long?
But legal experts contend it isn’t that simple: Ratification deadlines lapsed and five states have rescinded their approval, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, prompting questions about the president’s authority to ratify the amendment more than 50 years after it first passed.
Biden is leaning on the American Bar Association’s opinion, the senior official said, which “stresses that no time limit was included in the text of the Equal Rights Amendment” and “stresses that the Constitution’s framers wisely avoided the chaos that would have resulted if states were able to take back the ratifying votes at any time.”
This is an interesting bomb to throw back over his shoulder. Will Trump fight it? Is this another issue that will tear the Republican party apart? Will Zombie Phyllis Schlafly rise from her grave to haunt the halls of Congress?
I approve of the core principles of the amendment, but I also approve of any effort to sow chaos in the Trump administration.