Biden Suddenly Declares the Elusive 28th Amendment (ERA) has been Ratified and “Is the Law.”

Although the once-proposed Equal Rights Amendment was considered dead in 2020, without any new ratification event or revival legislation, Joe Biden, with three days left in his presidency, took to the White House Podium on Friday to announce that, “the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all necessary hurdles to be formally added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment.” Then he added in a slurred statement (video below) that it is “the law of the land, now! It’s the 28th Amendment to the Constitution, now!”

But it seems that no one, except for a few very left-wing ideologues, believe Biden. Most say the proposed 28th Amendment died in 2020, when it failed to obtain the required number of ratification votes by its own deadline. But, as stated, a few Democrats agreed that the Equal Rights Amendment had become effective upon Biden’s declaration.

Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe, whom some on the left consider a legal scholar, took the position that Biden’s statement had amended the Constitution. In a Substack article he wrote: “With three days left in his presidency, Joseph R. Biden ensured that the United States Constitution, the oldest on earth, would finally include an explicit guarantee of sex equality.” Another legal scholar, beyond reasonable dispute, is NBC’s Joy Reid, who declared that, Biden “has given the required notice to the states himself. So it’s done.” Vice President Kamala Harris, still smarting from her electoral loss to Donald Trump, affirmed the new constitutional amendment: “The Equal Rights Amendment belongs in our Constitution. It makes our nation stronger, and it is the law of the land because the American people have spoken in states across our nation.”

But, as we know, those who matter in deciding the legitimacy of the ratification of the 28th amendment, the nation’s mass media, are just not aligning with Biden on his assertion.

Politico called Biden’s announcement, “a last-ditch effort to protect women’s reproductive rights. But Biden’s assertion may amount to little more than an expression of his opinion, with the White House acknowledging that it has no immediate force of law — and the National Archives telling POLITICO it has no plans to formally add it to the Constitution.”

The Washington Post headlined its coverage, “Biden declares there is now a 28th Amendment. There is not.” Jeff Bezos’ newspaper indicated that Biden’s statement was one of those “crazy things [that] happen at the end of a presidency.”

“Sometimes crazy things happen at the end of a presidency. People who maybe shouldn’t be pardoned get pardoned. Presidents flood the zone with executive actions related to things they couldn’t get done legislatively or on dicey subjects they wanted to avoid before an election. And sometimes presidents get senioritis and throw caution to the wind. But rarely do we see something like this: An outgoing president suddenly declaring there is another amendment to the Constitution.”

The Washington Post added, “a 28th Amendment has not suddenly been appended to the Constitution per Biden’s decree — there are still only 27.”

The New York Times acknowledged that, “Under the Constitution, Mr. Biden does not have a direct role in approving amendments. Colleen Shogan, the national archivist, said last month that she could not certify the amendment ‘due to established legal, judicial and procedural decisions.’”

In mid-December, the Times had reported that “The national archivist on Tuesday preemptively stated she could not legally certify the Equal Rights Amendment as part of the Constitution, an unusual move that effectively shut down a campaign by Democrats to pressure President Biden to add it before he leaves office.” Evidentially, the Times got it wrong, as it did not “effectively shut down a campaign by Democrats to pressure President Biden to add it before he leaves office.”

The proposed 28th Amendment reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

But, as simple as this verbiage appears, numerous liberals and Democrats have said that these words prohibit any laws against abortion.

The Amendment, as proposed, required its ratification by three-quarters of the states within seven years. This was later amended to allow ten years for the ratification process to be completed. But at the end of this ten-year ratification period, the required two-thirds of states had not as yet ratified the proposed amendment. But several states either ratified the amendment after the deadline or withdrew their [previous ratifications after the deadline. Those saying the ratification process has been completed and that the 28th Amendment should be law generally argue that the imposed 10 year deadline was at all times irrelevant as the Constitution does not itself impose a deadline on ratification, and that once a ratification has made made by a state, it has no ability to withdraw the ratification.

The 28th Amendment is dead for the next four Trump years. But Democrats may well decide to resurrect it when they retake power in the future. They will forcibly argue that they do not need to start the process anew and obtain the states’ ratification. Rather, they will, as did Joe Biden, declare it into being and effect, proclaiming that all previous indications of its death were incorrect.