- The Atlantic: That’s Not How Constitutional Amendments Work
- NYT: Can He Do That? Here’s What Biden’s Move on the Equal Rights Amendment Means.
- Vanity Fair: Biden Proclaims That The Equal Rights Amendment Is The Law Of The Land—But What Does That Mean?
- NPR: Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment is law. What happens next is unclear
- WaPo: Biden reaffirms belief that the Equal Rights Amendment is the law
Because there’s a time limit on it. It had to have been ratified in a certain amount of time.
It’s actually an open legal question. Actual legal scholars have argued both ways on it. Yes, there is was a deadline in the act Congress passed to send the amendment out for ratification. But the key is that they didn’t include that deadline language in the text of the amendment itself. Some other amendments have language in the text of the amendment that places a deadline on ratification. That is the crucial difference here.
A good argument can be made that Congress can only propose an amendment or not. They can’t attach a bunch of extra provisos to the amendment process. Congress can’t confirm a justice to the court and apply a bunch of conditions to that confirmation. If they want to have a time limit on the ratification of the amendment, the time limit should be in the actual text of the amendment itself.
Yes, but precedent and Supreme Court rulings exist for Congress’s power to extend the time limit, and ultimately just decide whether an amendment is still valid.
