Twenty-Nine States Have a Not-So-Secret Weapon to Fight for Democracy

[niyad]

Twenty-Nine States Have a Not-So-Secret Weapon to Fight for Democracy
PUBLISHED 3/27/2025 by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf

In the states, equal rights amendments are protecting people where the federal government can’t—or won’t.



Ting Ting Cheng, director of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Project at NYU Law’s Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center. (The ERA Project)

This story was originally published on The Contrarian.

As the Trump administration’s attacks on women’s rights, reproductive access and LGBTQ equality continue in force, state executive leaders have emerged as potent frontline responders. Last month, Maine Gov. Janet Mills stood in opposition to the executive order banning trans athletes from women’s sports, informing Donald Trump that she’d see him in court. This past weekend, he took to Truth Social, still stewing apparently, to demand her personal “full throated apology” and statement to “never make such an unlawful challenge to the Federal Government again.” Meanwhile, the U.S. Departments of Education, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services have commenced multiple investigations that threaten denial of federal funding to the state. New York’s executive leadership formed something of a firewall on access to healthcare. Gov. Kathy Hochul refused to extradite a New Paltz, N.Y.-based doctor to Louisiana charged with prescribing abortion pills online to residents there and signed legislation enabling physicians to withhold their individual names on prescription labels. Attorney General Letitia James put all New York hospitals on notice of their legal obligation under state law to continue offering gender-affirming care to minors.


Among the tools in states’ arsenals are often underused state-level equal rights amendments (ERAs). Even as the federal ERA remains in limbo, an unlikely bulwark for the next four years—see professor Laurence Tribe’s Contrarian piece explaining its legal status—29 states have some form of an ERA (e.g., broader sex equality language than the U.S. Constitution) written into their constitutions. Several have already been used to advance abortion rights (Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Mexico); many are broadly worded and inclusive of protection against pregnancy discrimination, age, disability and immigration status. Issues such as pay transparency and addressing gender-based violence also could be bolstered by a state ERA.
. . . .


Finally, Cheng highlights practical outcomes of state ERAs for mandating hospital accountability. In New York, the Hospital Transparency Act would require hospitals to publicly report service limitations like restrictions on abortion, contraception, gender-affirming care and miscarriage management. Such transparency is critical for all patients, especially those in need of emergency treatment who often have no idea they will be denied care until they are already in the hospital.

According to Cheng, there is growing momentum for leveraging state ERAs across the country, mirroring reproductive rights strategy since the 2022 Dobbs decision. “State ERAs are a boon,” she notes, “not only for countering regressive federal policies, but for reimaging and reshaping legislative frameworks in ways that affirmatively advance equality.”As state governments and leaders continue to play a crucial part in the defense of American democracy, 29 of them can leverage the ERA is a way to lead on behalf of their residents—and the entire nation.

https://msmagazine.com/2025/03/27/state-era-equal-rights-amendment-ting-ting-cheng/

[Silent Type]

1. Right now, it appears states are the quickest way to codify equal rights, abortion rights, etc. Don't see national laws

doing much to preserve such rights, we are just too friggin divided.