Legal experts He criticized President Biden's announcement of the 28th Amendment Act as “cynical and irrelevant.”
Biden on Friday issued a statement saying the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) should be considered ratified and a new addition to the U.S. Constitution.
“It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. This is in fulfillment of my oath and my duty To the constitution “And to the country,” he said, “I affirm what I believe and what three-quarters of the states have ratified: The Twenty-Eighth Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protection under the law regardless of their sex.”
“Biden’s announcement is cynical and irrelevant,” said the former assistant U.S. attorney and Fox News contributor. Andrew McCarthy. “If he believed what he was saying, he would have said it when his administration started, not when he was on his way out the door as a failed one-term president.
“More importantly, the president has no constitutional role in the amendment process, and therefore his view carries no weight.”
On Friday, President Biden issued a statement saying the Equal Rights Amendment should be considered a new addition to the U.S. Constitution. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)
He added: “President Biden appears determined to move his administration from obnoxious to absurd.” Jonathan TurleyFox News contributor and Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University Fox News Digital. “This was an embarrassing moment of appeasement for the more extreme elements of his party. It is a position that rests on a foundation that has long been rejected and is frankly absurd.”
When asked by reporters about the timing of the announcement, Biden said on Friday: “Because I had to get all the facts and call every constitutional scholar in the world to make sure it was the right decision.”
The ERA would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. It was sent to the states for ratification in 1972. With Congress A 1979 deadline set for three-quarters of state legislatures to ratify the amendment. The deadline was later extended to 1982.
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Virginia became the last state The amendment passed in 2020, bringing the final number of states that passed the amendment to a total of 38. McCarthy noted that the RTA “was not ratified by the states within the legally allotted time frame.”
The National Archivist is responsible for making constitutional amendments official. (Istock)
“The only way to get it into the Constitution is to start over,” McCarthy said. “Everyone knows it, including Biden. That's why the National Archives didn't release it, and Biden didn't have the nerve to try to order it.”
Turley also said: “Biden has noticeably stopped short of giving the left what it wants most: an actual executive order on certification. He simply made an announcement and presumably left it to the archivist.”
ERA: What to know about the Equal Rights Amendment
The National Archivist is responsible for making constitutional amendments official. The archivist had previously declined to ratify the amendment, citing a 2020 opinion from Office of the Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Justice (OLC) which “affirmed that the ratification deadline set by Congress for the ERA is valid and enforceable.”
The archivist had previously declined to certify the amendment, citing a 2020 opinion issued by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“The Office of Legal Counsel concluded that extending or removing the deadline requires new action by Congress or the courts,” the National Archives said in a statement. “The court decisions at the district and circuit levels have confirmed that the ratification deadlines set by Congress for the ERA are valid.” Statement in December. “Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment. As leaders of the National Archives, we will adhere to these legal precedents and support the constitutional framework in which we work.”
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“This is just pandering,” McCarthy said. “It will have no lasting significance.”
