Los Angeles Employment Lawyer

The Equal Rights Amendment

In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed that the right to vote could not be denied because of a person’s gender. At the same time, Alice Paul, a suffragist leader, argued that this right would not end remaining vestiges of legal discrimination based on sex.

As a result of her concerns, Paul drafted the Equal Rights Amendment and presented it as the “Lucretia Mott Amendment” at the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Conventions.

The National Women’s Party took the ERA to Congress during the 1920s. Senator Charles Curtis and Representative Daniel R. Anthony Jr., both Republicans from Kansas, introduced the ERA as Senate Joint Resolution No. 21 on the 10th of December in 1923 and House Joint Resolution No. 75 on the 13th of December in 1923.

The ERA was introduced in every session of Congress between 1923 and 1970; however, it never reached the floor of either the Senate or the House for a vote. It was always bottled up in committee. The ERA was strongly opposed by the American Federation of Labor, labor unions, Eleanor Roosevelt, and most New Dealers. These groups contended that women needed government help and should not be forced into the workplace to compete with men.

In March of 2007, new resolutions were introduced in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. They contained the traditional ERA language but did not attach a deadline. The congressional sponsors referred to the resolutions by the name “Women’s Equality Amendment” but the title doesn’t appear in the resolutions. Some groups backing the proposal continue to refer to them as the “Equal Rights Amendment.”

The amendment would have a number of implications in the business world and other areas.

Contact a Los Angeles Employment Lawyer

If you have been a victim of discrimination in your work place, contact the Los Angeles employment law expert Perry Smith at 1-888-356-2529 to discuss your legal options.