[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                      THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT:
                        ACHIEVING CONSTITUTIONAL
                        EQUALITY FOR ALL

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                          OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            OCTOBER 21, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-48

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
      
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]      


                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov                             
                                __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-024 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2021                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------                            
                             
                             
                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts      Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee                Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia         Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois        Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Ro Khanna, California                Michael Cloud, Texas
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland               Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York   Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan              Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Katie Porter, California             Pete Sessions, Texas
Cori Bush, Missouri                  Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Andy Biggs, Arizona
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida    Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Peter Welch, Vermont                 Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr.,      Scott Franklin, Florida
    Georgia                          Jake LaTurner, Kansas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Pat Fallon, Texas
Jackie Speier, California            Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois             Byron Donalds, Florida
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Mike Quigley, Illinois

                      Russ Anello, Staff Director
                          Kate Kelly, Counsel
          Elisa LaNier, Chief Clerk and Director of Operations
                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

                  Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on October 21, 2021.................................     1

                               Witnesses

The Honorable Jennifer McClellan, Virginia State Senator
    Oral Statement...............................................     7

Ms. Alyssa, Milano, Actor, ERA Advocate
    Oral Statement...............................................     8

Ms. Carol Jenkins, President, ERA Coalition
    Oral Statement...............................................    10

Ms. Inez Feltscher Stepman (Minority Witness), Senior Policy 
  Analyst, Independent Women's Forum
    Oral Statement...............................................    12

Ms. Eleanor Smeal, President, Feminist Majority
    Oral Statement...............................................    14

Ms. Bamby Salcedo, President TransLatin@ Coalition, Board Member, 
  ERA Coalition
    Oral Statement...............................................    16

Ms. Victoria Nourse, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law 
  Center
    Oral Statement...............................................    18

 Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses 
  are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository 
  at: docs.house.gov.

                           INDEX OF DOCUMENTS

                              ----------                              

The documents entered into the record during this hearing, and 
  Questions for the Record (QFR's) for this hearing are listed 
  below.

  * Examples of sex discrimination; submitted by Chairwoman 
  Maloney.

  * Comments by Justice Ginsberg regarding 1982 deadline; 
  submitted by Rep. Comer.

  * Letter by Students of Life; submitted by Rep. Keller.

  * Survey of female support for ERA; submitted by Rep. Wasserman 
  Schultz.

  * QFRs: to Ms. Amby Salcedo; submitted by Chairwoman Maloney.

The documents listed below are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
                      THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT:
                        ACHIEVING CONSTITUTIONAL
                            EQUALITY FOR ALL

                              ----------                              


                       Thursday, October 21, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
                 Committee on Oversight and Reform,
                                                   Washington, D.C.
    The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via Zoom. Hon. 
Carolyn Maloney [chairwoman of the committee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Maloney, Norton, Lynch, Connolly, 
Krishnamoorthi, Raskin, Khanna, Porter, Bush, Wasserman 
Schultz, Welch, Johnson, Sarbanes, Speier, Kelly, Lawrence, 
DeSaulnier, Gomez, Pressley, Comer, Grothman, Cloud, Gibbs, 
Higgins, Norman, Keller, Clyde, Franklin, Fallon, and Herrell.
    Also present: Representative Spanberger.
    Chairwoman Maloney. [Presiding.] The committee will come to 
order.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any time.
    I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
    Welcome to everyone. As the first woman to chair the 
Committee on Oversight, I am particularly proud to convene this 
hearing on what I believe is one of the most important things 
we can do to ensure equality for women in our country: finally 
putting women and the Equal Rights Amendment in the 
Constitution. Discrimination against women is a persistent 
problem, yet our country's fundamental document does not 
guarantee equality. That is why I have introduced the ERA 13 
times during my career in Congress and why I am so committed to 
seeing this amendment adopted as part of our Constitution now.
    The Equal Rights Amendment was written more than 100 years 
ago by the legendary suffragist Alice Paul, who I am proud to 
say was a relative of my late husband, Cliff Maloney. After 
decades of effort, the ERA finally passed the House in October 
1971, 50 years ago this month, in a strong bipartisan vote. It 
passed the Senate overwhelmingly the following year. The 
preamble to the amendment included a seven-year time limit, 
and, in 1979, Congress voted to extend the limit by another 
three years. By 1982, the ERA had been ratified by 35 of the 
necessary 38 states, then momentum behind the amendment 
stalled. But that all changed in 2017 when the women's marches 
and the Me Too movement reminded us all that we are still a 
very long way from equality.
    In 2017, Nevada voted to ratify, Illinois followed in 2018, 
and Virginia in 2020. Thirty-eight state legislatures have 
voted to ratify the ERA, meeting the constitutional 
requirement, but the ERA still does not appear in the 
Constitution, and this has to change. Federal law directs the 
archivist of the U.S. to certify and publish amendments that 
have met the requirements laid out in Article V of the 
Constitution. This is purely a ministerial duty, which should 
be done automatically. But under President Trump, the 
Department of Justice issued an opinion advising the archivist 
not to certify the ERA. Today I am releasing a letter from 
preeminent legal scholars stating that this Trump-era legal 
opinion is legally erroneous and should be withdrawn. These 
scholars also make clear that the time limit in the preamble to 
the ERA is not an obstacle to ratifying the amendment. This 
time limit was not included in the amendment itself, and there 
is no time limit on equality.
    I strongly agree with the scholars' assessment that the 
time limit is likely non-binding and that Congress clearly has 
the authority to extend or eliminate time limits if necessary. 
So today I call on President Biden, who is a true champion of 
women, to withdraw this flawed legal opinion and allow the 
archivist to certify the ERA without delay. I also strongly 
support the legislation led by my colleague and friend, 
Congresswoman Speier, that the House passed to eliminate the 
time limit from the ERA. This would remove even the shadow of a 
doubt about the ERA's validity. I urge the Senate to take up 
this bill without further delay.
    After 100 years, women cannot wait any longer for full 
constitutional equality. The ERA is not merely a symbol. It 
will make a real difference in the lives of women and people 
who face discrimination, sexual violence, and unequal pay. The 
pay gap between men and women has persisted for decades with 
the average woman being paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to 
men. For women of color, the gap is even wider. In order to 
make the same income as a man earned last year, a Latina woman 
in this country has to work an extra 10 months until today, 
October 21. That is shameful, and it shows that the current 
legal standards are not adequate.
    In 1994, Congress passed the historic Violence Against 
Women Act, authored by then-Senator Joe Biden, which included a 
right for victims of sexual violence to sue their attackers. 
But when a young woman named Christy Brzonkala tried to sue her 
rapist where there was no dispute--it was a gang rape; one even 
confessed--the Supreme Court struck down that part of the law 
as unconstitutional. More recently, a Federal court in Michigan 
overturned a law banning female genital mutilation, which is an 
internationally recognized human rights violation. The judge 
found it was unconstitutional to ban female genital mutilation. 
What a disgrace for this to happen in the United States. With 
the ERA, Americans who go to court to challenge discrimination 
will have a fighting chance.
    Today equal rights can be too easily rolled back depending 
on the ideological leanings of Supreme Court justices, but 
constitutional amendments are permanent. We can't always 
control who is on the bench, but we can change the document 
they are tasked with interpreting so that it better reflects 
the equality that all Americans deserve. This committee will 
continue to work to put the ERA in the Constitution.
    I am very pleased now to recognize Congresswoman Jackie 
Speier, the sponsor of H.R. Res. 17 and ERA champion, for a 
brief opening statement.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, for holding the 
first full committee hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment in 
over 40 years. I know that when the ERA is finally added to our 
Constitution, it will be in no small part thanks to your 
steadfast commitment and leadership and the hard work of so 
many the sheroes who are here to testify today.
    We are here today to acknowledge a sad truth. Our country's 
founding was based exclusively on excluding women in the 
Constitution. It was intentional. We were deprived of basic 
rights to vote, prevented from being hired for most jobs, and 
from owning property. To this day we are paid less for our 
work, violated with impunity, and discriminated against simply 
for being who we are. The ERA was first introduced in Congress 
in 1923. That is 98 years ago. Yes, we are here today because 
nearly a century later, the Constitution still does not 
guarantee gender equality. We are here today because of 193 
United Nation countries, 165 of them have an equal rights 
amendment, but the United States does not. Countries that have 
looked to us to model their constitutions have recognized the 
equality of women and men, yet we fail to do the same.
    We are here today because, despite the tremendous progress 
women have made, we are still deeply unequal in society. In 
subtle and not so subtle ways, women are subject to 
discrimination, a reality denied by many of my colleagues 
across the aisle who insist we don't need the ERA because women 
are already equal. Well, to them I ask, what do you say to 
Christy Brzonkala, who was raped by two football players at 
Virginia Tech, and the Court that said that, in fact, Congress 
didn't have the power to pass that part of VAWA? That is why 
Section 2 of the ERA is so important. Or how about Tracy 
Rexroat, whose starting salary at the Arizona Department of 
Education was $17,000 lower than her male counterpart? They had 
equal experience, equal education, but she was paid $17,000 
less because of her salary history. A Federal district court 
ruled that unequal starting salaries don't violate the Equal 
Pay Amendment because salary history is an acceptable business 
reason for unequal pay.
    Or Jessica Lenahan, whose estranged husband kidnapped and 
murdered their three young daughters after police refused to 
enforce a restraining order. The Supreme Court ruled that 
Lenahan had no constitutionally protected right to enforcement 
of her restraining order. Or how about Peggy Young, who was put 
on unpaid leave without health insurance by UPS when she got 
pregnant? The Supreme Court set such a stringent standard that 
in two-thirds of the cases after Young, courts have ruled 
against pregnant workers seeking reasonable accommodation. If 
we certify the ERA, these cases would have very different 
outcomes.
    The ERA will create stronger legal recourse against sex 
discrimination, empower Congress to better enforce and enact 
laws protecting women, and confirm the rightful place of gender 
equality in the Constitution, not subject to the whims Congress 
or the White House. It will also ensure that the Supreme Court 
uses the most demanding standard of review in sex 
discrimination cases the way it already does for race 
discrimination. And despite the partisan rhetoric, I believe in 
my heart that most of my Republican colleagues know that this 
is not only the recognition of our inalienable rights, but that 
it is the right thing to do. That is why the Department of 
Justice must rescind the Trump Administration's legally flawed 
and non-binding legal memo on the ERA, and the archivist must 
immediately certify the ERA as the 28th amendment because 38 
states have already ratified the amendment as the Constitution 
requires. I am also proud to champion H.J. Res. 17, which 
passed the House earlier this year with bipartisan support, to 
remove any shadow of doubt that the ERA is, in fact, our 28th 
amendment, and I urge the Senate to act swiftly.
    I know that all of us will keep fighting until we achieve 
the promise of equal justice under law. Mark my words: we will 
get this done. We must get this done. Our daughters and 
granddaughters demand it. And with that, I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I will now recognize the co-chair of 
the Women's Caucus, a true leader on women's equality, 
Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, for her opening statement.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you so much, Chairwoman Maloney, for 
your leadership, relentless leadership, in working to advance 
the rights and freedoms of women and girls both in the United 
States and abroad.
    The urgent need for the Equal Rights Amendment is very 
clear. If I can quote my colleague, who stated--Jim Clyburn--
that ``America is only great when its greatness is shared 
equally for everyone in America.'' Since our country's 
founding, women have been intentionally left out of the 
Constitution. We have been treated as second-class citizens at 
one time in our history and had to abide by laws that gave us 
no voice or representation. And for those who still question 
the need for the ERA, take a look at the gender wage gap. Take 
a look at pregnancy discrimination. Take a look at the loss of 
reproductive freedoms.
    As the co-chair of the Women's Caucus, I introduced a 
resolution that will require our Declaration of Independence to 
state that all men and women are created equal. At minimum, can 
we as a country state that we are equal? We need the ERA so 
that women can achieve our full potential. We need the ERA to 
ensure that the rights of women and girls will not be rolled 
back by the political whims of the day, but, instead, will be 
preserved as the basic rights guaranteed by the United States 
Constitution. In the words of Abigail Adams, ``Remember the 
ladies.'' It would be wise, Mr. President, and to our 
government to remember the ladies, the ladies who have stood up 
and fought, who never stepped down when it came to serving our 
country and taking care of the least of us.
    I join today with such pride with all the women who are 
here today, the witnesses, and I look forward to hearing from 
you who are in the fight. And I thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back, and I now 
recognize the distinguished ranking member, my good friend, Mr. 
Comer, for his opening statement, and ask him to please 
understand, on a personal level, I ran for Congress to ratify 
the Equal Rights Amendment. That was my goal, and this is the 
first hearing in a full committee that I have been able to 
achieve that. So if I spoke a little too long or took the 
liberty of recognizing two incredible women leaders who have 
been fighting just as hard as I have for this hearing and for 
the Equal Rights Amendment, and I certainly grant as much time 
as the gentleman would like. And if you have two other members 
that would like to speak, we certainly will recognize your 
right to do so, and I appreciate your cooperation on postal and 
on this. Thank you.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, and 
congratulations on holding this hearing. Hopefully we will have 
some hearings that our side has been advocating for.
    But the message that I want to deliver today is all 
Americans, men and women, should be treated equally under the 
law regardless of their race, religion, or sex. Fortunately, 
all citizens of the United States are already guaranteed due 
process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United 
States Constitution and guaranteed equal protection under the 
Fourteenth Amendment. Federal laws, such as the Civil Rights 
Act of 1964, Title VII, the Equal Pay Act, and Title IX of the 
Education Amendments of 1972 already prohibit discrimination on 
the basis of sex in compensation, public accommodations, and 
federally funded programs. Despite what Democrats are telling 
us today, the 1970's, ERA--Equal Rights Amendment--is simply 
unnecessary and would be redundant of protections that already 
exist.
    In fact one of our witnesses today, Inez Stepman, will 
testify about the many potential adverse effects that the Equal 
Rights Amendment would have on this country, particularly on 
women. By taking away flexibility in our current legal regime 
that protects women's privacy, safety, and the ability to 
protect against harassment, the Equal Rights Amendment would 
usher in an era of judge-created rules that could negatively 
impact women. The Equal Rights Amendment could jeopardize 
programs, such as women's shelters and the WIC Program. It 
could force the elimination of sex-segregated public 
facilities, such as women's prisons and public school 
restrooms. It could also prevent female athletes from being 
able to fairly compete in sports, not to mention the fact that 
the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced 49 years ago and the 
deadline to ratify it expired four decades ago. Several states 
even rescinded their ratifications.
    Whatever your views on the expired Equal Rights Amendment, 
equality under the law for men and women is already guaranteed 
by the Constitution and by statute, and rightfully so, yet we 
are here talking about a long-expired proposed amendment. The 
Oversight Committee should be conducting oversight hearings on 
the Biden Administration or examining legislation actually 
within our jurisdiction. We should be holding hearings on how 
the Democrats' COVID-19 shutdown policies disproportionately 
impacted women and how women are being left out of the already 
slow economic recovery. We should be holding hearings with 
Biden Administration officials to find out what they are doing 
to solve the crises affecting Americans today.
    This country is facing crisis after crisis, but it is clear 
that our current political leadership is unable to meet these 
challenges head on, even denying they exist in some instances. 
Whether it is the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the 
crisis on our border, rising inflation, or growing supply chain 
issues, our committee should not remain on the sidelines. I 
urge the Chairwoman to please act on the approximately 20 
Republican requests for hearings or investigations we have 
communicated this Congress. We should be doing our jobs to 
ensure that our government works for all the American people. 
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back, and I would 
like to yield to my good friend, Mr. Connolly, to introduce our 
first witness, and also I would like to now waive onto the 
committee Abigail Spanberger from the great state of Virginia, 
the last one to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Thank you 
for joining us.
    Mr. Connolly, you are now recognized to introduce your 
constituent.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Madam Chairwoman, and 
thank you so much for having this hearing because I think it is 
time. Virginia has acted. I am glad to be joined by my 
colleague, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, in welcoming a 
distinguished member of the State Senate of the Commonwealth of 
Virginia, Jennifer McClellan. Senator McClellan has served the 
Commonwealth of Virginia for more than 15 years as a member of 
the House of Delegates and now in the State Senate. She has 
been a tireless champion for women's rights throughout the 
Commonwealth of Virginia, a fighter for progress, equity, and 
justice.
    Most recently, Senator McClellan introduced S.J. 1, 
Virginia's Equal Rights Amendment ratification. After its 
passage in 2020, Virginia became the 38th and qualifying state 
to ratify the amendment to help our country take a major step 
to join more than 100 nations that recognize equality based on 
sex and gender in their respective constitutions. We would not 
have passed the 28th amendment if we did not feel that we were 
finally solidifying the full ratification of the Equal Rights 
Amendment by the action taken by Senator McClellan and her 
colleagues in the General Assembly of Virginia. We are proud of 
that accomplishment, and we are delighted to have Senator 
McClellan here, and I know she is going to describe later the 
process and thinking that went behind that action.
    Welcome, Senator McClellan. Thank you again for having this 
hearing, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you for allowing 
Congresswoman Spanberger and myself to welcome a distinguished 
Virginian testifying today. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. And after Senator McClellan, 
we will hear from Alyssa Milano, who is an actress, a writer, 
and an ERA advocate. Next we will hear from Carol Jenkins, who 
is the president of the ERA Coalition. We will then hear from 
Inez Stepman, who is a senior policy analyst at the Independent 
Women's Forum, and then we will hear from Ellie Smeal, who is 
the founder and president of the Feminist Majority and 
publisher of the Ms. Magazine. Next, we will hear from Bamby 
Salcedo, who is the president of the TransLatin@ Coalition and 
is a board member of the ERA Coalition. Last but not least, we 
will hear from Victoria Nourse, who is a professor of law at 
Georgetown University Law Center.
    The witnesses will be unmuted so that we may swear them in. 
Please raise your right hand.
    Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to 
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Let the record show that the witnesses 
answered in the affirmative. Thank you.
    And without objection, your written statements will be made 
part of the record.
    With that, Senator McClellan from Virginia, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

 STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JENNIFER MCCLELLAN, VIRGINIA STATE 
                            SENATOR

    Ms. McClellan. Thank you, Madam Chair, Representatives 
Connolly and Spanberger, and members of the committee. I am 
very honored to be here today. I am Virginia State Senator 
Jennifer McClellan. I'm here as a daughter, granddaughter, and 
great granddaughter of educators, domestic workers, community 
leaders, and civil rights activists who struggled for equality 
in the segregated South. I'm here as a mother who does not want 
to leave the fight for equality to my children, Jackson and 
Samantha. I am here as a legislator who helped lead Virginia to 
become the 38th and final state necessary to ratify the Equal 
Rights Amendment last year.
    The history of my family and my Commonwealth is one of 
facing inequities and working to create a better future for the 
next generation. A hundred and 20 years ago, my great 
grandfather, born on a plantation four years after 
emancipation, had to pass a literacy test and find three white 
men to vouch for him to be able to register to vote, but my 
great grandmother couldn't. My grandfather and my father had to 
pay poll taxes. My mother comes from generations of domestic 
workers who served vital roles in our society and were often 
overlooked or treated unfairly and paid very little. And while 
my father could vote at the age of 22, my mother could not vote 
until well into her 30's after passage of the Voting Rights Act 
of 1965.
    I carried these legacies with me into the Virginia House of 
Delegates in 2006 at a time when there were only 16 women in 
that chamber. I felt that imbalance when I became the first 
delegate to give birth while in office and was asked if I would 
have to resign or retire as a result, while a male colleague, 
who became a father two months later, was not. For my family, 
my Commonwealth, and my country, it has been a long march 
toward equality, and it is a march that has included women of 
color from the beginning, even when we have often been the last 
to benefit from our work.
    Black women, including the founders of my sorority, Delta 
Sigma Theta, Incorporated, in their first public act in 1913, 
marched for the right to vote in this very city, even when told 
to march in the back. Black women marched for civil rights in 
1965 from here to the Lincoln Memorial, even though not given a 
speaking role, and women of color have led the way for the 
passage of the ERA, including Representatives Shirley Chisholm 
and Patsy Takemoto Mink 50 years ago when the House passed the 
ERA. Virginia's ratification was led by multigenerational black 
women, Senator Mamie Locke and myself in the Senate and former 
Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy in the House. Nevada's 
ratification was led by Senator Pat Spearman. Other women of 
color pushing their states to ratify the ERA include Arkansas 
Senator Joyce Elliott, Florida Senator Audrey Gibson, North 
Carolina Representative Carla Cunningham, South Carolina 
Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter, and Utah Representative Karen 
Kwan, just to name a few.
    I was proud to lead Virginia to become the 38th state to 
ratify the ERA last year. And given our history, it is poetic 
justice that it was Virginia to put the ERA over the top. In 
1619, the men of Jamestown understood that for Virginia to be a 
permanent settlement, they needed women, so they actively 
recruited women to ``make wives to the inhabitants.'' And in 
May of 1620, the first 90 women arrived in response to that 
call, and their rights were surrendered to their husbands. They 
could not vote. They could not hold public office. They could 
not own or control property. African women and men who arrived 
on these shores in 1619 were considered property and had even 
fewer, if any, rights. And as you heard, in 1776 when Abigail 
Adams wrote to her husband as he went to the Continental 
Congress, she implored him and his fellow delegates to 
``Remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to 
them than your ancestors.'' They didn't.
    Over the past 245 years, we have made progress slowly, but 
true equality under the law for women, and especially women of 
color, has been elusive. With the ratifications of the Equal 
Rights Amendment by Nevada, Illinois, and Virginia, the states 
have now done our part. It is now time for the national 
archivist to do his and certify the ratifications of these 
three states and publish the amendment. To the extent 
congressional action is needed, I ask you to take it 
immediately.
    It is time--it is past time--for the U.S. Constitution to 
join over 100 constitutions across the world in having gender 
equality in the Constitution, including every constitution 
adopted since World War II. It is time for me to stop fighting 
the same fights that my mother, my grandmother, and my great-
grandmother had to fight. It is time for me to tell my 
children, Jackson and Samantha, that the United States 
Constitution guarantees them both equality under the law. And I 
thank you for this opportunity to speak today.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you for your testimony.
    Ms. Milano, you are now recognized for your testimony.

       STATEMENT OF ALYSSA MILANO, ACTOR AND ERA ADVOCATE

    Ms. Milano. Madam Chair, distinguished members of the 
committee, thank you for holding this hearing and for inviting 
me to share some thoughts with you today. While I will speak 
briefly about the importance of the ERA, this hearing is not a 
debate on that amendment. That debate is over. We won. The 
states have directed Congress to amend the Constitution, and 
now it is the duty of Congress and the Administration to get 
out of the way and remove the arbitrary, unnecessary, and 
shameful deadline that was cynically imposed nearly half a 
century ago as a poison pill.
    Since the earliest days of our Nation, women have been 
fighting--not waiting, but fighting--for inclusion in our 
founding document. From the Seneca Falls suffragists to Alice 
Paul, from Shirley Chisholm and Gloria Steinem to the inspiring 
generation of young women and queer activists and allies of the 
New Millennium, we have pleaded for centuries for a simple and 
powerful thing: equality under the law. I want my daughter, 
Bella, to grow up knowing she has the same rights as every man 
in this country, and I want my son, Milo, and every boy in 
America, to know that too. They deserve a government that 
cannot treat them differently because of gender.
    If there is one word which defines the American identity, 
it is ``freedom.'' We call our President the leader of the free 
world. When we present ourselves to other nations advocating 
across the globe for democracy and human rights, it is freedom 
which drives that discussion. There are even members of this 
very committee who belong to something called the Freedom 
Caucus. But how can we be a free people when our governing 
document does not prohibit discrimination against more than 
half of the population? The answer, of course, is that we 
cannot.
    The lack of constitutional protections for anyone who is 
not a cisgender man is a blemish on the very idea of 
Americanism.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Alyssa, we are having a technical 
problem.
    Ms. Milano. Oh.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And we need to correct it with the 
Zoom.
    Ms. Milano. OK.
    Chairwoman Maloney. We are going to recess just for a 
moment to try to correct it.
    Ms. Milano. OK.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Because----
    Ms. Milano. The ghost of Alice Paul.
    [Laughter.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK.
    [Recess.]
    Chairwoman Maloney. Can you hear me now? Yes, they can hear 
us now.
    OK. Great. So we are now back in order, and, Ms. Milano, if 
you would please continue. And my apologies for this 
disruption.
    Ms. Milano. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. How can we be a 
free people when our governing document does not prohibit 
discrimination against more than half of our population? The 
answer is, of course, we cannot. The lack of constitutional 
protections for anyone who is not a cisgender man is a blemish 
on the very idea of Americanism. As long as the Constitution 
allows gender-based discrimination, the United States can never 
achieve the greatness to which it aspires.
    Eighty-five percent of U.N. member states have 
constitutions which explicitly guarantee equality for women and 
girls. Madam Chair, if you lived in Latvia or Iceland, you 
would be assured of having the same rights as the men on this 
committee. Here in the United States of America, you are not. 
Today a white man on this committee will probably ask me which 
rights American women do not have that American men do. Allow 
me to preempt that question. There are many current gender-
driven injustices in our country, but the Constitution is not 
simply about the present. The Constitution is about what we 
bring far into the future. It exists to protect us from the 
what ifs.
    The ERA will outlive every one of us. It is a permanent 
protection of our most basic rights. Your obligation to the 
people of our Nation, not just today, but in the centuries to 
come, requires you to take action. The framers failed us when 
they did not include women in the Constitution. Congress failed 
us when it added the deadline for ratification of the ERA. You, 
the members of this committee, have the opportunity and the 
obligation to fix the Constitution and stop it from failing us. 
Will you take it? Will you answer the call of history and the 
promise of the future, or will you continue to allow the 
enemies of equality to continue to prevent America from being a 
truly free Nation? These are your only options.
    Thank you for your time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Jenkins, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

      STATEMENT OF CAROL JENKINS, PRESIDENT, ERA COALITION

    Ms. Jenkins. Thank you so much, Chairwoman Maloney, for the 
invitation to speak here today, and to Ranking Member James 
Comer as well, and for the entire committee for holding a 
hearing on this important issue.
    It is well past time to lift the time limit. It is well 
past time to talk about the Equal Rights Amendment, and the 
first full committee hearing since the 1970's is absolutely 
long overdue. This is an important step for sex equality and 
for democracy, and we are grateful to be here. And I especially 
am grateful to be in this room named for one of my heroes, 
Elijah Cummings. And I always loved one of his admonishments to 
us that, ``We can do better than this,'' and this is what I 
feel about America and its girls and women. We can do better 
than this. I am glad to be here with my board members, Alyssa 
Milano and Bamby Salcedo, who are leading this effort in this 
country for equality. My name is Carol Jenkins, and I am 
grateful to be serving as the president and CEO of the ERA 
Coalition and its sister organization, the Fund for Women's 
Equality.
    I have been fighting for what I call simple and pure 
equality, which is the concept of the Equal Rights Amendment, 
for almost my entire life. This, what I call an agitation for 
democracy and equality, runs through my veins. I was born in 
one of the poorest counties in America, both then when I was 
born some time ago and still today one of the poorest schools. 
It's called Lowndes County, Alabama. It was farm country just 
outside of the capital city of Montgomery. They used to call it 
Bloody Lowndes where they lynched people for wanting to vote 
and much, much less. My cousin sat in at segregated lunch 
counters and got arrested and brutally beaten for the right to 
a cup of coffee. My successful businessman uncle bailed Martin 
Luther King, Jr. out of the Birmingham jail as he sat there 
writing his famous letter that helped change our lives. Our 
family farm, that Lowndes County farm, was the third stopover 
in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery.
    I spent nearly a quarter of a century as a reporter 
documenting the failure of our democracy and its incremental 
improvement, and in South Africa where I covered one of the 
most spectacular victories of persistence, Nelson Mandela 
emerging from prison alive and eager. And this was after 27 
years of imprisonment, breaking the back of apartheid and 
releasing millions of black-skinned people from a hellish 
state-sanctioned way of life. This fight for the ERA has lasted 
a century. The women and men who have waged this war against 
discrimination are every bit as determined as MLK and Nelson 
Mandela, and the rights we are fighting for our equally 
important.
    Fifty years ago in 1970, our board member, Gloria Steinem, 
spoke right here in Congress in a hearing on the Equal Rights 
Amendment before the Senate and talked about the perpetual 
falsehood, one we still hear today. She said, ``Another myth is 
that women are already treated equally in this society. I am 
sure there has been ample testimony to prove that equal pay for 
equal work, equal chance for advancement, and equal training or 
encouragement is obscenely scarce in every field.'' She said 
that 50 years ago. It's still true today. And despite stating 
the case for the ERA in Congress 50 years ago, Gloria Steinem, 
Ellie Smeal--glad to be sitting next to another one of our 
leaders--and many others are still fighting for these same 
rights in 2021.
    And women of color, and black women in particular, have 
always been at the forefront of this movement. Shirley Chisholm 
gave a fiery testimony right here on the House floor in support 
of the Equal Rights Amendment. Her support for the amendment, 
too, led the way for passage of the ERA in the House of 
Representatives the following year, 50 years ago. And it was a 
queer black episcopal priest lawyer and author named Pauli 
Murray who was the architect of the litigation strategy used by 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg while arguing in support of a Fourteenth 
Amendment to the Constitution. This led to Pauli being 
recognized as one of the mothers of the modern sex equality 
movement, and her arguments for equality for women included the 
intersectional take on her own identity as well, calling the 
meeting of racism and sexism ``Jane Crow.'' Pauli spoke about 
these overlapping identities in her powerful and persuasive 
testimony on the ERA.
    Black women have also led the ratification efforts of the 
last three states needed to reach the 38-state threshold 
required by the Constitution for all amendments. This revived 
the current fight for the Equal Rights Amendment across states 
and in Congress. State Senator Pat Spearman, another queer 
black woman, led the successful charge for ratification in 
Nevada in 2017. The next to last state to ratify, Illinois, saw 
Black lawmakers, including State Senator Kimberly Lightford, 
then-State Representative Litesa Wallace, and then-State 
Representative Juliana Stratton lead the fight in 2018. And of 
course, as we have heard, in January 2020 in Virginia, a 
multigenerational group of black women lawmakers led the 
ratification of the ERA, including State Senator Jennifer 
McClellan, who so eloquently and wonderfully led that fight, 
State Senator Mamie Locke, then-State Delegate Jennifer Carroll 
Foy. Other key lawmakers in Virginia during ratification were 
Delegate Hala Ayala, an Afro-Latina woman, and Delegate Danica 
Roem, the first out transgender woman to serve in a state 
legislature.
    This movement continues to move forward with black women in 
places of leadership throughout the advocacy space as well. 
Many of the organizations that are part of the ERA coalition 
are, in fact, now led by black women, including Supermajority, 
NOW, the League of Women Voters, and others, and the Coalition 
itself is presided over by black women. I lead and we have two 
board chairs, Kimberly Peeler-Allen and S. Mona Sinha. We are 
actually a tremendously broad coalition of movements, nearly 
200 organizations representing women's rights, civil and voting 
rights, LGBTQ and trans rights, disability rights, faith 
groups, and workers' rights, including unions representing 
airline workers, 80,000 miners, and 350,000 teachers. We are 
all united in this effort to eliminate discrimination based on 
sex.
    The ERA Coalition began providing a collective place for 
ERA action in 2014, and in these eight years we have gathered 
these nearly 200 organizations as equality partners. We have 
worked in the states. We were present in the gallery when 
Virginia became the 38th and final state needed for 
ratification. We were in Congress with Congresswoman Maloney to 
mount a shadow ERA hearing in Congress to demonstrate why the 
time limit needed to be removed. Congressman Jerry Nadler told 
us that day that if he became chair of Judiciary, he would give 
us a real hearing, and he delivered on his promise in 2020. And 
we were there with Speaker Pelosi and Congressman Speier.
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair?
    Ms. Jenkins [continuing]. When the House passed the time 
limit bill, and I will state that----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Your time is long past, and that was a 
subcommittee hearing that we had then. But your time has 
expired, as the gentleman points out, so can you wrap up and we 
will----
    Ms. Jenkins. Certainly. I will just say that as the 
grandmother of two biracial children who have two mothers, I 
want this country to reflect their lives. I don't want them to 
be ashamed of who they are. I want their ability to be 
recognized in the Constitution of the United States to be true 
equality, and I believe the only way that can happen is by 
enacting the ERA. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Stepman, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.

  STATEMENT OF INEZ FELTSCHER STEPMAN, SENIOR POLICY ANALYST, 
                   INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM

    Ms. Stepman. Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Comer, 
distinguished members of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, 
I am honored to testify today against the proposed Equal Rights 
Amendment to the United States Constitution. I currently serve 
as a senior policy analyst with Independent Women's Voice and 
the Independent Women's Law Center.
    Today in the United States, men and women are equal under 
the law, but, crucially, not interchangeable. We do not require 
that the law treat men and women exactly the same in all 
circumstances, even when they are incarcerated, in the sports 
arena, on the front lines of combat, because we understand that 
in some limited situations, physical and biological differences 
matter deeply. In those situations, the law is permitted to 
recognize the very real differences between males and females. 
In hundreds of everyday instances, that recognition allows 
women and girls to take advantage of opportunities, compete, 
and even feel safe.
    The recognition of biological sex has been a necessary 
prerequisite for the freedom, prosperity, and success American 
women have enjoyed these past several decades. These laws have 
created opportunities for women, maintained our privacy, and 
even protected our safety in situations where those differences 
become relevant and come with serious consequences. State, 
Federal, and constitutional law all protect basic sex equality 
in 2021. Our Nation's law books are replete with prohibitions 
on sex discrimination in education, athletics, housing, 
employment, including prohibitions on sexual harassment and 
unequal pay. To the extent that discrimination against women in 
these areas still exists, it is already illegal, and the ERA 
will add nothing to the protections that women already enjoy.
    The ERA, if written into our highest law in an illegitimate 
amendment process, will not advance the position of women and 
girls in our society, but will instead undermine the successes 
we have already attained and even place us in harm's way. For 
example, incarcerated women have until recently been able to 
rely on being housed in a prison only with other women on the 
commonsense assumption that it is dangerous to house female 
inmates with male ones in close quarters, and that co-ed 
prisons make women vulnerable to physical and sexual assault. 
But under our current legal protections, the government is not 
allowed to, and should not be allowed to, discriminate on the 
basis of race the way that it does by separating men and 
women's prisons. In Johnson v. California, the Supreme Court 
held that preventing violence in prisons does not rise to the 
level of government interest required by the Constitution. If 
the same strict scrutiny standard were applied to single-sex 
prisons under the Equal Rights Amendment, a conservative 
interpretation of its legal impact, by the way, women would 
quickly find themselves at the mercy of male prisoners.
    These consequences are already happening in states that are 
allowing male-bodied inmates who identify as female to transfer 
to the women's prisons, and that policy has already resulted in 
sexual assaults on female inmates. But the ERA could 
potentially make the problem far worse by extending that 
invitation, not just to a small percentage of people who are 
born one sex and identify as another, but to all male prisoners 
regardless of identification. After all, ``discriminating'' 
against men by keeping them out of women's prisons is a 
discrimination on the basis of sex, exactly the kind of policy 
a plain language reading of the ERA is intended to prevent.
    The same rationale could apply to any context in which the 
government separates or distinguishes between men and women, 
for example, when selecting a same-sex TSA agent to administer 
a pat down at the airport. Similarly, public schools, whether 
on the K-12 or university level, would not be able to maintain 
separate bathrooms, locker rooms, or sports teams for boys and 
girls. Universities would not be able to maintain separate 
dorms for male and female students, and campus-connected 
sororities and fraternities would potentially become, 
overnight, constitutional violations. A boy whose 100-meter 
dash time qualifies him for the girl's team but not for the 
boy's team is kept off the former only by a ``discrimination'' 
on the basis of sex.
    Again, we are dealing with the ramifications of 
accommodating individuals whose gender identity does not match 
their born sex in all of these contexts already. But the ERA 
would throw the doors wide open to all males in these settings 
and more. Recognition of biological reality is not bigotry or 
discrimination. When we treat men and women as though there are 
no differences in size, strength, or otherwise between them, we 
create more female victims. Equality between men and women 
doesn't mean treating us exactly the same. Treating males and 
females exactly the same regardless of biology, privacy, or 
circumstance, hurts women and girls.
    In 2021, the ERA has no upside. The language might sound 
nice, but it will not improve women's lives. To the contrary, 
by prohibiting public policy from ever taking into account 
biology and common sense, and by short circuiting debate 
through an illegally rushed process, the ERA would deny the 62 
percent of the electorate who weren't of age or born when we 
last considered the consequences of the ERA a chance to weigh 
in on the question of whether women and men should be treated 
identically in all circumstances. And by the way, the majority 
of that electorate is women.
    The ERA would harm women and girls, and I urge you to vote 
against its much-belated resuscitation.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. Ms. Smeal, you are now 
recognized for your testimony.
    [No response.]
    Ms. Smeal. Thank you. I'm Eleanor Smeal, president of----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Excuse me. You don't have your 
microphone on and we can't hear you. It is the red button front 
of you. Great.

  STATEMENT OF ELEANOR SMEAL, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, FEMINIST 
                      MAJORITY FOUNDATION

    Ms. Smeal. Thank you very much, and thank you, Chairwoman 
Maloney, for your years, and your persistence, and your 
leadership, and your dedication to the ratification of the 
Equal Rights Amendment and to place it in the Constitution. 
Your leadership has been marvelous for all in this country, and 
I am so happy about being here today. I am honored to work with 
you and this committee in asking for the ERA to be certified in 
the Constitution.
    I started, but you already said it, and I am going to say 
it again. The Equal Rights Amendment is 52 words. It is simple. 
It's ``Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or 
abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.'' 
The second clause is short: ``Congress shall have the power to 
enforce by appropriate legislation the provisions of this 
article.'' And finally, the last section, one sentence: ``This 
amendment shall take effect two years after the date of 
ratification.''
    I have worked for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment 
for over 50 years. The arguments that you have just heard, I 
have had to listen to for over 50 years. I know what side I've 
been on because while we have been fighting for gender equality 
to be placed in the Constitution, we have also been fighting 
day in and day out to empower women and girls and to win gender 
equality for all. Feminist Majority and the Feminist Majority 
Foundation are both dedicated to this principle, and we've 
worked on all kinds of programs. But let me just go a little 
bit into my history on the Equal Rights Amendment and you will 
see why I feel so deeply about this.
    I began my work as a young activist in the Pittsburgh, 
Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women. I 
was really lucky that chapter had the national president, Wilma 
Scott Heide, and the national coordinator--this is now 1970--of 
the task force to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, Jean Witter. 
And why do I say their names, and I'm going to try pepper more 
names in. Because thousands and thousands of people have fought 
for this amendment, and, while they were fighting for it, for 
equality in many other ways. Our chapter got rid of help wanted 
ads, men and female. We sued the Pittsburgh press at that time, 
but we only won by a 5 to 4 decision, even though it was 
blatant, prima facie discrimination: only 20 different jobs 
advertised for women and several hundred for the men.
    Now, in fighting, we also passed the Pennsylvania Equal 
Rights Amendment, which was one of the strongest state ones. We 
fought in state after state and we now have in over two dozen 
states. At the same time we did that, just a small group of 
women broke up the hearing for the 18-year-old vote so there 
would finally be a hearing in the Senate on the Equal Rights 
Amendment. The reason it's taken so long, these 100 years, is 
we lost about 50 of them and, I mean, 50 of them, very bright 
wonderful leaders.
    How did we lose it? They boxed it up in committee. They 
wouldn't allow a vote. In fact, to get the first vote and the 
vote to ratify in the House took 50 years because it was boxed 
up in the Judiciary Committee and they wouldn't allow a vote. 
And why wouldn't they allow a vote? This has been so popular, 
they knew it would pass overwhelmingly when, in fact, it would 
be placed on the floor. And when it was, after a discharge 
petition by Martha Griffiths, and I had the pleasure to work 
with her at the very beginning of my own career, it was passed 
354 to 24 people, overwhelmingly, I would say, bipartisan.
    To get it going in the Senate, we disrupted the hearings of 
the 18-year-old vote and got a promise from Birch Bayh, the 
major sponsor in the Senate, that he would finally hold 
hearings on it. And so, in 1972, we won 84 to 8. These are not 
close votes because why? We were way ahead in the polls. People 
wanted equality for women. But we had to keep fighting, and at 
first it went really, really fast, but it got bottled up again 
in delays, delays, delays. For example, we are all grateful for 
the 38th state of Virginia ratifying, but we should say what 
happened in Virginia. It was bottled up in the Privileges and 
Elections Committee of the House for about 50 years, and when 
it comes out, we passed it, but it didn't come out until the 
year 2020. Bottled up.
    Now, what happened in between? I hear all the time about 
Title VII, Title IX. We worked to put those things on the 
books. Feminists worked. One of the things they keep on saying, 
you have all these guarantees, but what they don't say is that 
along the way, and we had a hard time on this at first--we now 
don't have that hard time--but is that others tried to defeat 
and undermine Title VII and Title IX. In fact, Title IX, by the 
Reagan Administration, was gutted by the Grove City case. I 
don't have the time to go into that whole case, but we had to 
work to restore it and pass an amendment to restore it. The 
thing with Title VII, the Roberts Court gutted----
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair?
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman is pointing out that your 
time has expired.
    Ms. Smeal. OK.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And you have pointed out very important 
reasons why we need it because it can be rolled back and 
overturned.
    Ms. Smeal. Rolled back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. So thank you for that, but all your 
testimony will be in the record.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I now recognize Ms. Salcedo. You are 
recognized for your testimony.

 STATEMENT OF BAMBY SALCEDO, PRESIDENT, TRANSLATIN@ COALITION, 
                AND BOARD MEMBER, ERA COALITION

    Ms. Salcedo. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    [Speaking foreign language.] Greetings, everyone. I know it 
was hard for some of you to understand what I just said, but it 
is customary for me that before I speak, I acknowledge my 
Creator for allowing me to breathe one more day. I also honor 
the land where we're standing today, and I ask permission from 
the Natcotchtank and the Piscataway peoples to allow me to 
speak in their land today.
    I'm humbly grateful to be in your presence today. Thank 
you, Chairwoman Maloney and members of this committee, for 
allowing me to share my experience, strength, and hope with you 
today. My name is Bamby Salcedo, and I'm a very privileged 
trans Latina woman who has the honor to be the president and 
the CEO of the TransLatin@ Coalition, a national advocacy 
organization based in Los Angeles that also provides social 
support and lifesaving services to trans, gender non-
conforming, and intersex people. I also serve as a board member 
of the ERA Coalition.
    My experience is that of a person who has had the 
opportunity to survive many horrific experiences simply for 
being who I am: a trans woman who is Latina, an immigrant, 
someone who has overcome constant discrimination, multiple 
sexual assaults, homelessness, drug addiction including 
overdoses, and left for death in alleys. I spent over 14 years 
of my life incarcerated. I have been chased out of 
neighborhoods and beaten. I had to do sex work as a means to 
survive. I have had guns pointed into my head. I committed 
multiple suicide attempts.
    I experienced all of this because I was pushed by our 
society because there were no laws or protections against 
discrimination to protect people like myself. I can honestly 
say that I have survived things that you probably are not able 
to imagine. But what is most unfortunate is that the same 
issues that I have endured and overcome, many members of my 
community are experiencing today all across the country, even 
in California which is the state that has the most inclusive 
legislation to protect trans people.
    2021 will be a record number of murders in the trans 
community. I have seen many of my friends die. I have organized 
more funerals than celebrations in my community. All of this 
because we have no national legislation that will serve as a 
protection for all people. I know that you are probably going 
to say what about the Equality Act. The truth is that the 
Equality Act does not look at all of the intersections across 
my life and will not provide constitutional equality. For 
example, I am glad my friend Monica Ramirez started Latina 
Equal Pay Day, which we're acknowledging with sadness today. As 
a trans Latina woman, the pay gap is enormous. The 
discrimination that we experience while trying to get 
employment in the workplace is rampant. The Equality Act will 
not support other trans women and me obtaining employment and 
being compensated and valued equally for our work. The Equal 
Rights Amendment will help ensure no discrimination against all 
peoples--poor, indigenous, black, trans women. All peoples.
    My strength is that I get to share with you who I am and 
what I have overcome, and how people have uplifted me and 
supported me to heal my wounds, which, unfortunately, our 
government has failed to do. My strength is that I speak to you 
with my truth because my truth is my power. My hope is that you 
understand the opportunity that we have in this moment in time, 
that you understand that the Equal Rights Amendment is what our 
Nation needs right now to heal the intergenerational wounds 
generated against the most marginalized. I hope you open your 
hearts and your minds, and you do the humane thing to ensure 
that all peoples, not only those who are like me, have the 
rights that we deserve, that we get to be acknowledged as the 
human beings that we are, that we are given some dignity, and 
that we honor the work of many people who have tried for more 
than five decades to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. We have 
an excellent opportunity to support all peoples and not just 
some. While I support the Equality Act and its passage, the 
ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment nationally needs to 
happen. I hope that I get to see the passage of the Equal 
Rights Amendment in my lifetime.
    Every day I am afraid that I can be killed simply because I 
am a trans woman. I ask that you see that there is no other 
time like what we have today, that we do not continue to see 
divisions nor continue to feel messages that say some people 
are more deserving than others, but that we see people in this 
country need to be protected in value, and that you use your 
power to ensure the affirmation of the Equal Rights Amendment. 
There is no time like the present, and the time to act 
favorably about the Equal Rights Amendment is now. Please be on 
the right side of history. Only you can do that for yourself, 
and many people depend on you to what is humane.
    I am sure that generations to come will see then who are 
the people who understood what human and civil rights are, who 
used their power for the betterment of all peoples. Today is a 
historic day, and I want for you to ask yourselves, do I want 
to be on the right side of history. I hope your conscience says 
yes. I invite you to imagine a new world, a world of 
constitutional equality and freedom for all.
    Thank you so much for the opportunity to be in your 
presence today.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. And, Professor Nourse, you 
are now recognized for your testimony.

  STATEMENT OF VICTORIA NOURSE, PROFESSOR OF LAW, GEORGETOWN 
                     UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER

    Ms. Nourse. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney and Ranking 
Member Comer. It is a delight to be here with these wonderful 
women and thank you for your leadership. My name is Victoria 
Nourse. I'm the Ralph Whitworth Professor of Law at Georgetown 
and teach about constitutional and statutory interpretation.
    I ask first-year constitutional law students to read the 
Constitution's text. It is a beautiful text of 4,000 words. But 
then I ask them what is absent from the text, and I say, well, 
does it say anything about sex discrimination and work? Could 
you be fired because you are a woman, or a man for that matter, 
and they look very hard in the text, and they are disappointed 
to find nothing. Now, I understand there have been people here 
talking about rights being protected. They're talking about 
statutes. Those statutes can be taken away by Congress and they 
can be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
    Justice Scalia was quite candid about the text of the 
Constitution. He was a great friend of Georgetown, and he would 
come to the law school and talk about the text of the 
Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment. Now, he was very 
candid when he gave an interview and he explained that the 
words ``equal protection''--the Fourteenth Amendment has been 
mentioned today--do not cover women. This is what he said: 
``Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on 
the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. 
Nobody ever thought that that is what it meant.'' He's 
referring to the Fourteenth Amendment. ``Nobody ever voted for 
that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by 
sex, hey, we have things called legislators and they enact 
things called laws.'' Justice Scalia told women to look to 
Congress, not the Constitution, for their rights.
    Recently I watched the brave testimony of gymnasts Simone 
Biles, Aly Raisman, Maggie Nichols, and others who testified 
about their sexual assault and why the Federal Government had 
done so little, how the law had failed them, how they were 
disbelieved and ignored. It was something of a deja vu for me. 
Thirty years earlier in the year 1990, I was a very young baby 
lawyer sitting behind a man named Joe Biden on the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, and I listened to emotional testimony like 
that of Bamby today about how the legal system had treated them 
as second-class citizens. It has been 30 years since that 
testimony, and yet those brave Olympians were saying the law 
still did not protect them, that the FBI had turned a blind 
eye, and I knew the deep reason for this. Why? It resides in 
the Constitution and let me explain that.
    In 1994, Congress passed a bipartisan bill that might have 
helped many sexually assaulted and harassed women of color and 
sexual orientation, and that would've included the Olympians, 
the survivors of Weinstein, and others. The original Biden 
Violence Against Women Act included a civil rights remedy so 
you go to civil court. If the criminal justice system doesn't 
work, go to civil court. Women did not need to go to the FBI. 
If the criminal justice system treated them poorly, they had 
justice in their own hands, and it worked for six years. But 
then in 2000, guess what happened? The Supreme Court struck it 
down. So a future supreme court, as Ms. Milano said, you don't 
need to be a constitutional law professor to realize that the 
Supreme Court can strike down a law passed by Congress.
    In Morrison, the Court said not under the equal protection 
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment nor under the commerce 
clause did Congress have the power to enact a civil rights 
remedy to protect against sexual violence and harassment. Now, 
I urge Congress to rethink this. I know that President Biden 
supports this remedy, but the moral of my story is much 
broader. It's about the Constitution. We now have a Court of 
nine unelected men and women, six of whom idealize Justice 
Scalia. The six justices who have publicly aligned themselves 
with him have a judicial philosophy, and I have debated Justice 
Barrett before when she was a law professor. She's a lovely 
woman, but she has a judicial philosophy that she thinks 
insulates her from bias, and that judicial philosophy is known 
as textualism or originalism. I write about this. I study it. 
What that means is if it is not in the Constitution, it doesn't 
exist. This is a new theory. No one ever told me in law school 
about it. So even if there are precedents on the books that 
were mentioned by one of the witnesses and by Mr. Comer about 
the Fourteenth Amendment, there is no guarantee that this Court 
will not overturn them.
    So ladies, and to my daughter and to my son, be afraid. 
Other than the Nineteenth Amendment which gave women the right 
to vote, women are not recognized in the Constitution's text. 
Without the Equal Rights Amendment as a constitutional 
insurance policy, all of the things that women take for granted 
could simply go away with a vote of five men on the Supreme 
Court. Unequal protection is not a fantasy. It is a reality 
every day for women who are harassed or sexually assaulted, the 
victims of domestic violence. Harassment with impunity 
structurally protects racial and age discrimination as well. It 
is no wonder that interest in the ERA has mushroomed in the Me 
Too/Time's Up era. Young women know----
    Voice. Madam Chairwoman?
    Ms. Nourse. Let me just say one final word about this 
amendment. The time limit was in the preface to the amendment, 
not in the text. So, when the 38th state ratified, it was 
ratified. If necessary, Congress has the power to extend the 
deadline, but that is only if necessary, and the OLC opinion, 
in my view, has no legal validity and it is not law. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you for your testimony.
    I now recognize myself for five minutes for questions.
    The effort to adopt the ERA is more than 100 years in the 
making. The century of work for constitutional equality shows 
how important it is to women and how tenacious we are in 
working for it. On October 12, 1971--50 years ago--the ERA 
passed the House. It was widely popular on both sides of the 
aisle. And even in today's extreme polarization, the ERA is 
still incredibly popular with the American people, both 
Democrats and Republicans. Professor, we know it has been 
ratified by the requisite number of states, and I believe it 
already should be part of the Constitution. Professor Nourse, 
as a constitutional legal scholar, is there a constitutional 
role for the executive branch in the amending process?
    Ms. Nourse. No, and the Supreme Court has so held.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And, Professor, the Trump 
Administration issued a legal opinion claiming that the ERA 
cannot be certified and that the time limit cannot be extended 
or removed even by Congress. Is this memo binding legal 
precedent?
    Ms. Nourse. No, it is not binding legal precedent. I 
actually believe that no President, whether Republican or 
Democrat, has legal authority to issue a binding constitutional 
opinion on Congress' authority because Article V only mentions 
Congress. The President has no role.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And do you agree with the memo's 
assertion that the time limit cannot be extended or removed?
    Ms. Nourse. I disagree with that. The text of Article V 
says Congress. This is in Congress' authority, and there are 
precedents as well that that memo is inconsistent with respect 
to extending the deadline.
    Chairwoman Maloney. And thank you. I agree with you that 
the Trump opinion blocking the ERA is legally erroneous and 
should be withdrawn. Ms. Smeal, you have been at the forefront 
of this fight from the beginning. Why is the ERA still 
necessary? After all of the progress that you have fought for 
and that we have been able to achieve, do we still need it 
today?
    Ms. Smeal. Yes, we still----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Can you turn on your mic because it is 
not on.
    Ms. Smeal. Yes, we need it. What I was trying to say is 
that statutes can be easily changed, and they have been. Title 
VII and Title IX have been changed. None of them are complete, 
and we cannot rely on the Fourteenth Amendment or the 
Interstate Commerce Clause. The Violence Against Women Act had 
a section in it which said that the victim or the survivor 
could take a Federal action, a civil action, to get damages in 
Federal court if no one would defend her or if it was 
inadequate at the state level. That was declared 
unconstitutional. The ERA would give a survivor of sexual 
violence a chance in the Federal courts.
    And it was very clear that this gives the power to Congress 
to enforce it through appropriate legislation. Without it, 
Congress doesn't have the power. Everything is always a little 
bit here, a little bit there. For example, the Affordable Care 
Act prohibits sex discrimination in pricing and benefits. 
Before it passed, the typical health insurance plan for a woman 
did not cover maternity. In the typical plan, a woman was 
paying between 150 percent and 200 percent more for similar 
coverage, but no maternity coverage. This was outlawed by the 
Affordable Care Act, but you know that they are trying to 
reverse it, reverse it, reverse it. I could tell you other 
insurances regulated at the state level, but a state can't 
discriminate either. Life insurance, annuities, auto insurance 
all have sex discrimination tied into it costing the average 
woman, you know, totally billions and billions of dollars.
    Chairwoman Maloney. All of this is so important. Please 
place it in writing for the record.
    Chairwoman Maloney. I only have a few seconds left, and I 
wanted to ask our friend from Virginia, Senator McClellan, you 
were so active in getting it passed. What did it take to get it 
ratified in Virginia, and did the ratification effort have 
bipartisan support? Can you share that with us?
    Ms. McClellan. Thank you, Madam Chair. It took persistence 
and it had bipartisan support from the beginning. The 
resolution passed the Senate many times, sometimes carried by a 
Democrat, sometimes carried by a Republican, and was always 
bottled up in the Subcommittee of the House Privileges and 
Elections Committee, never making it to the floor. When the 
majority changed and the leadership changed and it was allowed 
a vote in the committee and on the floor, it got bipartisan 
support in both chambers.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. It is clear that the ERA is 
not only relevant, but it is necessary, and I urge the 
archivist to formally certify and publish the ERA as the 28th 
amendment to the Constitution. I want to thank all of you. My 
time has expired.
    And I would now like to recognize the gentleman from Ohio. 
Mr. Gibbs is now recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Gibbs. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I would 
like to associate myself with the remarks made by the ranking 
member in his opening remarks, Ranking Member Comer, about the 
reason for this hearing, and also, I believe the Fifth and 
Fourteenth Amendments guarantee equal protection under the 
Constitution. And I would also like to associate myself with 
his remarks. You know, we are facing multiple crises, 
emergencies caused by the Biden Administration's policies, 
inept policies, and they really require the attention of the 
Oversight and Reform Committee and where I think we actually do 
have jurisdiction. And, you know, our families are being beat 
up right now with inflation and higher costs of living and 
their concerns, and we are not having any hearings on those 
crises, and we really should, Madam Chair.
    I want to take a little bit of a different angle here. We 
talk so much about how far we have come in this country in the 
100 years of women's rights and equality, and I don't think 
there is a person that would disagree, certainly not in 
Congress, that it is very bipartisan that we all think that 
women should have equal rights. They should have the same pay 
for doing similar type work. They should be able to vote. Those 
aren't debatable. We all believe that in our hearts. The 
concern I have, even the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg 
talked about, you know, we really need to start over in the 
process because it has been so long. So many things have 
changed. And I have a concern that, we talked about it is not 
in the Constitution, but there are lots of laws out there 
protecting it, like Title IX, you know, equal pay, you know. 
There are a lot of things out there to protect women, and there 
is a debate, or a concern, I should say, but there hasn't 
really been a debate because, like Madam Chair said, you said 
that the archivist ought to just enact it now because all these 
states have ratified it, even though we have five states, maybe 
four states, that rescinded that before the deadline. That was 
actually during the process, you know, nearly 40 or so years 
ago.
    So I think that, you know, we do need to have debate to 
make sure that we don't do something that is going to harm 
women's rights with all the progress we have made in this last 
100 years. Let's face it. Even since this was proposed back in 
the 70's, and, of course, it was originally written, as you 
said, almost 100 years ago, a lot of things have changed and we 
have come a long way, and we don't want, you know, to have 
unintended consequences. So I would ask Ms. Stepman, is it not 
true that the U.S. Constitution already guarantees equal 
protection under the law for universal suffrage for women, 
correct? Just kind of ``yes'' or ``no,'' Ms. Stepman.
    Ms. Stepman. That is correct.
    Mr. Gibbs. OK. Also, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 
Equal Pay Act of 1963. It is already illegal under these 
Federal laws to discriminate against women. Is that correct?
    Ms. Stepman. That is correct, and it is illegal in the 
states as well.
    Mr. Gibbs. OK. Is it also correct that, or true, I should 
say, or correct that prior to the 1979 deadline, Idaho, 
Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota rescinded their 
earlier past ratification?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes, except I think South Dakota just had a 
sunset clause on theirs.
    Mr. Gibbs. OK.
    Ms. Stepman. One of them. I can't remember which one 
honestly. I am a little under pressure here.
    Mr. Gibbs. That is fine.
    Ms. Stepman. But one of those states had a sunset.
    Mr. Gibbs. Well, the other side of the aisle keeps talking 
about the, I guess, three states ratified it recently, and now 
the archivist ought to just enact it into the Constitution. And 
how about the states that decided maybe there were issues, they 
made a mistake, and they rescinded it? Like I said, some of 
those states actually did it before the deadline, so it seems 
like, to me, that would be an open and shut case that it hasn't 
been ratified by the required amount of states.
    Also in your written testimony, or in your written 
testimony, I should say, Ms. Stepman. In your previous 
writings, you talked about the Equal Rights Amendment could 
take away flexibility that protects a woman's privacy, safety, 
and ability to protect against harassment. Can you describe 
some of the flexibilities that currently exist that would be 
jeopardized by the Equal Rights Amendment, especially if 
decisions and interpretation were left to the courts?
    Ms. Stepman. Absolutely. So the ERA could have a lot of 
consequences for women and girls because this current regime, 
even though we do have equal protection under the Fourteenth 
Amendment and all of the civil rights law that you listed, 
Congressman, unfortunately the ERA would make it inflexible, 
right? So what we have right now is a regime that protects 
women's equality with men, but still allows in limited, very 
limited situations, those situations in which our biological 
differences are actually relevant, that there is flexibility in 
the law to recognize that. For example, as I mentioned, in 
prisons, when we separate boys and girls in locker rooms and 
public schools, right, when we have TSA pat downs from a member 
of the same sex. These are all ways in which the law has 
flexibility right now to recognize that in some situations it 
makes sense to distinguish between men and women because we are 
biologically different and ignoring that fact does not help 
women and girls.
    Mr. Gibbs. I totally agree, and my time is up. I would just 
say, Madam Chair, that we ought to really take the advice of 
late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg that we ought to restart the 
process over and have a debate, and make sure we do the right 
thing and don't err by unintended consequences. I yield back, 
Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back, and I would 
like to briefly address the issue of rescissions that he 
brought up. For historical comparison, two states attempted to 
rescind their ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, but 
they were rejected by Congress and the Fourteenth Amendment was 
certified and published. It is also important to note that the 
validity of rescissions has never been affirmed by the Supreme 
Court.
    I now recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. 
Lynch. You are now recognized, Mr. Lynch.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank you also 
for holding this hearing and for assembling such a 
distinguished group of witnesses, and I am thankful for their 
testimony. I would like to use some of my time to explore how 
certifying the ERA would actually help the United States meet 
its international obligations.
    As most of us know, in 1980, President Carter signed the 
International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of 
Discrimination Against Women. However, as we all know, the 
United States did not ratify that convention, and as well, in 
1992, the United States did ratify the International Covenant 
on Civil and Political Rights, which, in part, does require the 
United States to take steps to prevent sex discrimination and 
gender-based violence, but we seemingly remain in 
noncompliance. So, I know that Professor Nourse, and Ms. 
Jenkins, and Ms. Smeal have been working on this issue for a 
long time, but how would the passage of the Equal Rights 
Amendment help the United States meet its international 
obligations? Ms. Nourse, maybe you could take a first crack at 
this. Thank you.
    Ms. Nourse. Thank you for making that point. I think it is 
very important to meet those international obligations. We are 
not in compliance with a variety of international treaties. You 
know, one of the things that I find surprising is that so many 
democracies in the world, as mentioned by other witnesses, have 
an ERA and we don't. We purport to be the greatest democracy in 
the world. They have not, you know, had such a great difficulty 
with it, so I think that it would be very important for 
international obligations. And I will just mention that I think 
that the premise that this would hurt women is incorrect 
because the premise depends upon an assumption about how a 
Supreme Court might interpret the law, which is incorrect. And 
I could talk about that if anyone would like to hear me on it.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you. Ms. Jenkins, I know you have been 
working on this for a long time and you have been fighting for 
women's rights globally. Again, our international obligations 
and, I would say, our moral authority around the world, how 
would that be affected if we fail to adopt the ERA?
    Ms. Jenkins. Well, we already are held in very low esteem 
around the world, I would say, because of our failure to have 
Equal Rights Amendment, our failure to join CEDAW, our failure 
to participate in equality. I think that we have reached that 
point where we no longer can stand in the bully pulpit and tell 
other countries what to do about equality when we have 
performed so poorly ourselves. And, you know, I think that, you 
know, this century-long fight, you know, is just demonstrative. 
You know, many people ask us, and I am an activist, not a 
lawyer, but I am saying many people ask us why does America 
hate its women. Why does it not want to give them equality? Why 
do they have to beg? Why do they have to take to the streets 
again and perpetually to ask for this non-discrimination, for 
the ability to be a first-class citizen and not perpetually 
left out? I think, you know, if you say that, well, this 
statute is working and that one is working, and I say tell me, 
you know, why are most of the impoverished of our country poor 
women, you know. Why are they women? Why are families, you 
know, headed by women, you know, trying to figure out how to 
feed their children? You know, 1 in 3, you know, children in 
this country are food insecure.
    So, I think that if we go, again, back to, you know, as I 
like to say, that if you are looking for the root of sexism and 
misogyny, you will find it in our Constitution because it was 
intended for a certain class of people who don't represent the 
people who are on this panel and in this room today. So, I 
think that we really, as a country need to rehabilitate 
ourselves. We fixed the Constitution 27 times, you know, so we 
know that it wasn't perfect. It needs to be fixed one more time 
so that, you know, women are not second-class citizens, and it 
is a shameful exhibit, you know, of ourselves around the world. 
And I thank you for the question.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Madam Chair. I see my time has 
expired, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The 
gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman, is recognized.
    Mr. Grothman. Thanks for calling on me. I will ask Ms. 
Feltscher-Stepman a couple questions.
    Ms. Stepman. You can use ``Stepman.''
    Mr. Grothman. First of all, I am looking here at a study 
mentioned by Heritage Foundation. They claim that unmarried 
childless women under 30 who live in cities earn more than 
their male counterparts, their peer group. Do you believe that 
is true and could you comment as to why you think that is true?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes, I do believe that is true, and that is 
because the wage gap that keeps getting mentioned during this 
hearing is due overwhelmingly to different aggregate choices 
that men and women make in their careers with regard to hours 
worked, with regard to which college majors they choose, and 
many, many other factors. In fact, the Obama Department of 
Labor, so the Department of Labor under the Obama 
Administration, put out a meta study that looked at a bunch of 
different analyses and studies of the so-called pay gap, and 
found that overwhelmingly that gap is explained by women's 
choices in terms of what fields they want to go to and how they 
balance family and career. So it makes perfect sense that young 
women who do not have children, who are unmarried, who are 
working in a similar way as young men do, would end up closing 
that gap and, in some cases, even exceeding it because women 
actually get the majority of college and higher degrees at this 
point. So that is not surprising.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Looking at some other statistics here, it 
says here that 93 percent of the workplace fatalities are to 
men. Do you believe that statistic, and do you want to comment 
on it?
    Ms. Stepman. Sure. That is likely because men choose more 
dangerous employment than do women. And, in fact, another one 
of the points that was brought up earlier today by one of my 
fellow witnesses was with regard, for example, to health 
insurance costing more for women before the Affordable Care 
Act. Well, car insurance costs more for men because men have 
more car accidents. These are not instances of sex 
discrimination or bigotry. These are instances in which men and 
women behave as large groups, and there are always individual 
exceptions, but as large groups and in the aggregate behave 
differently and choose different life paths, different careers. 
I don't find this to be a negative thing. I think it is a 
positive thing that we live in a country that is free and 
prosperous where women and men can choose their own paths, even 
if they happen, on aggregate, to be different from one another.
    Mr. Grothman. I wasn't going to ask this question, but 
something Ms. Jenkins said caused me to look at it, and I would 
like you to comment on this. It says here that 70 percent of 
the homeless in our society are men. Do you want to comment on 
that?
    Ms. Stepman. It is just yet another example that, on 
aggregate, we should expect that men and women will take 
different life paths, both in a positive and negative way, 
because there are many real biological differences between men 
and women. That doesn't mean that we are not fundamentally 
equal, that we shouldn't be equal under the law. But we do have 
to have a law that is flexible enough to recognize when those 
are instances of actual invidious discrimination where somebody 
is preventing a woman from doing something simply because she 
is a woman, or it is one of those situations in which men and 
women differ and those differences are actually relevant to the 
situation in question.
    Mr. Grothman. This is, again, something, I can't vouch for 
it, but Uber, you know, hires people. They have some men and 
some women driving. Apparently there is a study, and there is 
apparently a pay gap which the men who work for Uber are making 
more than the women. Do you want to comment on that? Could that 
possibly be true, and are there any conclusions you draw from 
it?
    Ms. Stepman. Sure. Uber pays by an algorithm, so there is 
no possibility for any kind of intentional discrimination 
between men and women, male and female Uber drivers. In fact, 
that seven-percent pay gap that they found among their drivers 
differing by sex was the result of, frankly, women driving a 
little bit slower on average and a couple of other factors than 
do men, right? So, again, we are seeing that these gaps emerge. 
And I would point out that a lot of these countries that are 
being brought up, like Iceland or Sweden who have ERAs, the 
wage gap exists there, too, because these gaps do naturally 
arise when men and women make different decisions.
    And I don't know why the male standard of what decisions 
they make in their career is the standard that female success 
is pegged to. I think women having the freedom and opportunity 
to make their own choices is actually what we are after by true 
equality here. And I think the ERA would actually interfere or 
destroy that kind of true equality that women and men do have 
in this country.
    Mr. Grothman. OK. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman from Virginia, 
Mr. Connolly, is recognized. Mr. Connolly? Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. Professor 
Nourse, Article V of the Constitution reads, and I quote, ``The 
Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it 
necessary, shall propose amendments to the Constitution, which 
shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of the 
Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths 
of the several states.'' Is that correct?
    Ms. Nourse. That is correct and thank you for reading the 
text.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Yes, the text always helps. Is 
that text in any way modified or refined by any other language?
    Ms. Nourse. No.
    Mr. Connolly. No. Has the ERA, in fact, met that standard? 
Have we, in fact, seen the amendment approved by two-thirds of 
both the House of Representatives and the Senate?
    Ms. Nourse. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. And has the ERA been ratified by the 
legislatures of three-fourths of the states?
    Ms. Nourse. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. Virginia being the 38th. Is that correct, 
Senator McClellan?
    Ms. Nourse. Thank you, Virginia.
    Ms. McClellan. That is correct.
    Mr. Connolly. You can confirm that.
    Ms. McClellan. That is correct.
    Mr. Connolly. So have we not met the standard of the 
Constitution?
    Ms. Nourse. We have met the standard of the Constitution.
    Mr. Connolly. Well, why wouldn't it be subject to the same 
criteria as the preceding 27 amendments to the Constitution?
    Ms. Nourse. It should. You know, it took 203 years to get 
the congressional pay amendment, so I think the only argument 
here is about delay, and timing is not written into the text of 
the Constitution.
    Mr. Connolly. So we had statutory language putting a time 
limit in the preamble to the language of the amendment itself. 
Is that correct?
    Ms. Nourse. That is correct. It is in the preamble.
    Mr. Connolly. And what is your opinion about the legal 
binding nature of such statutory limitation?
    Ms. Nourse. I think Congress has plenary power to read that 
as it wishes, so that it appears to me to be prefatory or 
advisory language. That is not what the states ratified. If we 
look at the amendment itself, there is prefatory language, and 
then it says ``Article,'' and there is Section 1, 2, and 3. 
That is what the states ratified, not the deadline.
    Mr. Connolly. So we have a real live example in front of 
us: Virginia, my home state. Senator McClellan, can you 
enlighten us when you and your colleagues looked at the ERA, 
given what Professor Nourse just said, how did your colleagues 
look at the prefatory language in the statute versus the actual 
text of the amendment in front of you, and why did you decide 
you could proceed?
    Ms. McClellan. We looked at the prefatory language as not 
the amendment itself, and nothing in the Constitution discusses 
timeframes or time limits, or even if they would be valid. And 
so we looked at the text of the Constitution, and what it told 
us to do was ratify the amendment. That is what we did.
    Mr. Connolly. And it isn't that you ignored the language. 
You took it into account, but you made a decision it wasn't 
controlling.
    Ms. McClellan. That is right.
    Mr. Connolly. And, therefore, there was no impediment from 
your point of view. I don't mean to put words in your mouth. I 
am asking. There was no impediment to your actually acting in 
ratifying the amendment.
    Ms. McClellan. That is right. The states are told by 
Article V to ratify. There is nothing in the amendment process 
and the Constitution about deadlines or rescissions, and we did 
what we were authorized to do under the Constitution.
    Mr. Connolly. And did you in ratifying it assume that by 
becoming the 38th state, you, in fact, had enshrined this 
amendment into the Constitution?
    Ms. McClellan. We did.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you very much for that testimony. I 
just want to say, Madam Chairwoman, that the ranking member 
mentioned rescission, and I think that is a bugaboo that needs 
to be punctured, if I am not mixing my metaphors. When we go 
down that road, we go down the road of, you know, let's rescind 
the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery in America. Let's, in 
fact, rescind the 10 amendments to the Constitution of the 
United States that were adopted or promulgated by the first 
Congress with the aid and attention of a great Virginian, James 
Madison, because, I don't know, we have changed our minds. 
Where does that end?
    And, you know, just like secession, rescission is not a 
provision provided for in the Constitution of the United 
States. In the case of secession, we fought a bloody, terrible 
Civil War to make that point. Hopefully we don't have to do the 
same about rescission. I contend, based on this testimony, that 
the ERA is now an amendment to the Constitution, duly ratified 
by the 38th state, the Commonwealth of Virginia. I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman yields from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins, is now 
recognized. Mr. Higgins.
    Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I respect your 
endeavor through the years in support of the ERA, and I respect 
my colleague, Mr. Connolly's, position. Let me attempt to 
interject a reasonable proposal that perhaps could be embraced 
by both sides of the aisle. Let's begin with the Civil Rights 
Act of 1964, which banned employment discrimination on the 
basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. 
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, 1868, states, ``All 
persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to 
the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and 
of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or 
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or 
immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any 
state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without 
due process of law, nor deny to any person within its 
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'' The text of 
the Equal Rights Amendment, Section 1, a significant section, 
states, ``Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied 
or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of 
sex.''
    Now, you will see a repetitive theme here. It is the 
endeavor of our country, as we move forward with our journey as 
a Nation, to embrace the rights and protections of every 
American citizen, indeed of every child of God, that lives upon 
American soil, and we support that. In 1972 and in 1976, with 
slight variance, 80 million Americans voted in the Presidential 
elections. The average age of voters at the time was 44 years 
old. The 1976 Presidential election, the era of the ERA, that 
was 45 years ago. The average age of voters was 44. That means 
1976 voters would be 89 right now. The average life expectancy 
in America was 79.
    It is the reality, to my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle, that the Americans that had an opportunity to vote in 
the sovereign states, and we are a representative republic of 
50 sovereign states, those Americans that had the opportunity 
to vote for ratification of the ERA have mostly passed on to 
their final reward. Now, may I submit to you that, reflective 
of, you know, my own perspective, I am the seventh of eight 
children. I have six sisters. I have three daughters, two 
living, and I have an amazing wife, and let me just say that I 
support the Equal Rights Amendment. I don't have a problem with 
it. It is a bit repetitive to existing law, but OK, you know, 
the women of our country deserve this message of respect and 
for it to be permanently etched in our founding document.
    My father told me long ago when I was just a young lad, he 
said, son, the wisest words ever assembled are ``yes'' and 
``ma'am.'' You save a lot of trouble during the course of your 
life if you say ``yes, ma'am.'' So I say to the ladies present 
and to our good chairwoman, yes, ma'am, move forward by all 
means with the Equal Rights Amendment. But from the words of 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, let me encourage you to consider her words 
in 2020: ``I would like to see a new beginning,'' Ginsburg told 
an audience at Georgetown University Law Center. ``I would like 
to see it start over regarding the ERA.'' In 2019, she said, 
``I hope someday it will be put back on the political hopper, 
starting over again, collecting the necessary number of states 
to ratify it.'' That was in 2019.
    May I submit to you, do it right. Say ``yes, ma'am'' to 
this generation of women from sea to shining sea. Give them an 
opportunity to vote, to ratify the ERA. May I submit that if 
the ERA was resubmitted to Congress, it would pass by a wide 
bipartisan margin. And if presented to the states for 
ratification, I propose that all 50 states would ratify the 
ERA, and it would be done now with voters that live now. Do it 
right. You want to pass the ERA? By all means, move forward. I 
will support it. If my daughters support it, my wife supports 
it, and my sisters support it, then who am I to stand in the 
way? I would support it, but do it right.
    Madam Chair, I yield.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The 
gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Raskin, is now recognized. Mr. 
Raskin.
    Mr. Raskin. Madam Chair, thank you very much. I am 
delighted to hear my friend from Louisiana speak in strong 
favor of the Equal Rights Amendment, which I think probably is 
a good harbinger for our amending the Constitution this 
century. So just a question of exactly when and exactly how, in 
response to requests for guidance on January 6 last year, the 
DOJ Office of Legal Counsel--OLC--issued an opinion in response 
to a request from the National Archives and Records 
Administration on the ERA. And this OLC opinion concluded the 
archivist could not publish the ERA because the time limit had 
passed, and the archivist has stated that this OLC opinion 
prevents him from certifying and publishing the ERA.
    So, Professor Nourse, I want to ask you about the validity 
of this 2020 OLC opinion from the last Administration and the 
role of the executive branch in the constitutional amending 
process. First of all, as a general matter, are OLC opinions 
binding precedent like a decision of a Federal district court 
or the U.S. Supreme Court?
    Ms. Nourse. No, they are not binding.
    Mr. Raskin. And are there situations in which OLC opinions 
are actually withdrawn, or modified, or reversed? And if so, 
what are the circumstances under which a prior OLC opinion 
might be changed or withdrawn?
    Ms. Nourse. Well, yes. There is a very famous instance 
where an OLC opinion appeared to endorse torture, and a 
subsequent Administration withdrew it. In this case, the OLC 
opinion actually contradicts prior OLC opinions. The Trump 
opinion contradicts some prior opinions from earlier.
    Mr. Raskin. I got you. So there is nothing unusual at all 
about changing or reversing a flaw to OLC opinion when one 
Administration looks back and finds legally unsound reasoning 
underlying a prior one, especially when the prior one itself 
was a reversal of a prior opinion that came to that 
Administration.
    Ms. Nourse. That is correct.
    Mr. Raskin. So let's come back to the substance then, 
Professor Nourse. In your opinion, is the 2020 OLC opinion 
legally sound?
    Ms. Nourse. No, and why not? Because it is inconsistent 
with the Supreme Court's decision in Coleman v. Miller. It 
purports to bind Congress to the deadline in a way that is 
inconsistent with the Supreme Court's opinion, suggesting that 
this is a political question that the Court cannot opine on, 
and that is my position.
    Mr. Raskin. All right.
    Ms. Nourse. I don't think that the Court would take this.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, if it is inconsistent with prior Supreme 
Court precedent, is it inconsistent or consistent with 
President Biden's statements on the ERA?
    Ms. Nourse. It is inconsistent with President Biden's 
statements on the ERA. He has endorsed the ERA. He supports the 
proposition of sex equality. I have worked with him since 1990 
on this. I know that is correct. I am sure that the Justice 
Department knows about this. They can, in fact, withdraw this 
opinion consistent with his policy.
    Mr. Raskin. So it seems to me that the OLC should rescind 
the prior Administration's opinion, which is what is blocking 
certification of the ERA today. Can you also clarify the OLC's 
authority in the case of the ERA? Article V of our Constitution 
gives power to which branches of government over the 
constitutional amending process?
    Ms. Nourse. Well, thank you for that because the OLC, in 
this case, really has no authority because the President is not 
part of the amendment process. We heard from Mr. Connolly that 
Article V starts with Congress. It is about Congress' 
authority.
    Mr. Raskin. Yes. So not only is it not a controlling legal 
authority in the sense of a Court precedent. It is not even 
really persuasive authority because it is just one person in 
the last Administration in a different branch of government 
opining as to what the Congress of the United States should do, 
right?
    Ms. Nourse. That is correct. I run the Center on 
congressional Studies, and I am delighted to hear that Congress 
might be asserting its authority aggressively here. I don't 
believe that the OLC has authority to determine Congress' rules 
or proceedings under Article I, Section V, or any other 
provision of the Constitution.
    Mr. Raskin. Yes. By the way, do you agree with the dogma 
that we have three co-equal branches of government? I mean, 
``co-equal,'' first of all, is not even a word. It is like 
``extremely unique'' or something like that. But the 
President's role is to take care that the laws are faithfully 
executed. The laws are passed by the Article I branch, the 
primary and predominant branch of government. As Madison put 
it, we are the lawmaking branch. We have the power over the 
amending process just like we have the power to regulate 
domestic and interstate commerce. And, of course, the Court's 
role is just to adjudicate over the interpretation of statutes 
in the Constitution. But would you agree that Congress is 
really who is driving the train in America?
    Ms. Nourse. Absolutely. Hallelujah. Article I is Article I 
for a reason. We have forgotten this because we think that the 
Supreme Court is supreme, and, in fact, it was Article III for 
a reason. The Court arrogated to itself non-textual authority 
to reject laws. We are used to that now, and we believe we are 
a better country for it.
    Mr. Raskin. Well, and some people think the judiciary is 
supreme, and some people think that the President is a king, 
and so we have to combat both of those dogmas and ideologies. I 
thank you for your indulgence. Madam Chair, I yield back to 
you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back. The 
gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Norman, you are now 
recognized.
    Mr. Norman. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Let me just 
emphasize what Ranking Member Comer mentioned, that, you know, 
we have had 20 requests to have hearings on things that are 
really a train wreck in this country. Look at our immigration 
where people are coming across this border. Women are getting 
raped. Children are getting raped. The drugs coming across. We 
are experiencing inflation where everyone is paying 42 percent 
higher in gas prices that is so unfair, particularly for those 
on fixed incomes. We have an Administration that is tone deaf 
to generals who have criticized the current Administration in 
rank and conspired with foreign countries. We have asked for 
hearings on things like this because last nine months have been 
an absolute train wreck. But be that as it may, we will 
continue to ask for hearings that we think are current.
    I thank each one of our witnesses. You know, I listened--we 
have seven--six of the seven. Let me just describe what I have 
listened to, and I am not going by my script. This is the 
description that six of the seven have described the country 
that we live in now. We live in a country where it is equal 
opportunity for women as well as equal pay. We live in a 
country where there is no gender equality. We live in a country 
that is deeply flawed. I guess the question was asked why does 
America hate women. We live in a country where gender-driven 
injustices exist. We live in a country that Congress has failed 
us. We live in a country that, one of the witness says, ``I am 
afraid of being killed.''
    You know, you wonder why people from 152 countries are 
trying to get into America and they are not leaving. I wonder 
what your testimony would be on the women that are being raped 
that are coming into this country. I wonder what your testimony 
would be with the Uyghurs in China who wanted freedom and are 
now incarcerated. I wonder what your testimony would be with 
the Kate Steinles that are getting gunned down by illegals. And 
I wonder what your testimony would be over the 22 cities that 
have been destroyed and the businesses that have been 
destroyed.
    But this one particularly stood out, Ms. Milano, and thank 
you for bringing up the Freedom Caucus. I am a proud member 
because we promote freedom. But let me quote what you said: 
``Discrimination exists in half of the population of America.'' 
Can you name me three things good about this country?
    Ms. Milano. Of course I can, but before I do that, I would 
like to address a couple of issues, one of which you mentioned 
rape. I have been sexually abused. I would like the same 
constitutional equality as my abuser. Second of all, everyone--
--
    Mr. Norman. My time is running out. I need three things 
good about America that none of the six mentioned. Just three 
things that are good about this country.
    Ms. Milano. Freedom of speech.
    Mr. Norman. That is a good thing?
    Ms. Milano. Freedom of choice. Yes.
    Mr. Norman. To kill a child.
    Ms. Milano. I believe that abortion is healthcare.
    Mr. Norman. Really?
    Ms. Milano. I do.
    Mr. Norman. Should double homicide be eliminated from the 
books if----
    Ms. Milano. I would also like----
    Mr. Norman. Hold on. Let me just ask a question, Ms. 
Milano.
    Ms. Milano. OK.
    Mr. Norman. I listened to you. If a woman and a child are 
murdered today and the child dies, it is double homicide. 
Should that go off the books?
    Ms. Milano. The Fourteenth Amendment creates a 
constitutional right to abortion. Do you want to repeal the 
Fourteenth Amendment? I do not.
    Mr. Norman. Which positives? You named freedom of speech. 
What are your other two?
    Ms. Milano. Freedom of speech. Freedom of choice.
    Mr. Norman. Freedom of choice.
    Ms. Milano. Opportunity for people that come to this 
country----
    Mr. Norman. Thank you for at least.
    Ms. Milano [continuing]. As immigrants. Migration is a real 
thing, and because of the government's inaction on climate 
change, it will continue to happen more.
    Mr. Norman. OK. So those are three good things. And then if 
this is passed, ``sex'' could be interpreted. You mentioned you 
were raped. Sex would be interpreted by the courts to mean a 
person's sexual orientation or gender identity, implicating 
faith-based nonprofits, women and children's privacy and 
safety, and women's sports rights. Is this something you agree 
with? Does this make our children safer by being identified as 
a man or a woman and going to a woman's bathroom?
    Ms. Milano. So if----
    Mr. Norman. ``Yes'' or ``no.'' My time is up.
    Ms. Milano. If a state has a compelling interest----
    Mr. Norman. ``Yes'' or ``no.''
    Ms. Milano [continuing]. In maintaining a specific sex-
based distinction, for example, limiting a battered women's 
shelter to women----
    Mr. Norman. You are not answering my question, ma'am.
    Ms. Milano [continuing]. To protect them from continued 
trauma, the ERA will not affect it.
    Mr. Norman. Madam Chair. My time is up. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired, and 
he yields back. But I want to briefly address his claim that 
this committee is not doing enough bread-and-butter oversight. 
The truth is that this committee is actively engaged in 
oversight over waste, fraud, and abuse, especially in the 
Subcommittee on COVID-19 on the contracts that they have let 
and on the whole operation and looking at all of that. And just 
this week, we sent a bipartisan letter to the IG of the 
National Archives and Records Administration asking for a 
review of the unacceptable backlog of veterans' records at the 
National Personnel Records Center. And earlier this month, we 
had a hearing on FEMA and overseeing the Administration's 
response to Hurricane Ida. And in the last two months, we have 
conducted a number of multiple member briefings on Afghanistan, 
a bipartisan briefing, classified, with the Administration, and 
we have one set up coming up shortly, and a bipartisan letter 
to the FBI on the handling of ransomware attacks, and the 
oversight of the treatment of Haitian asylum seekers. And these 
are just some of the areas that we have worked on.
    Just last week, we had an oversight of the Postal Office 
and Postal Service, and we are coming up with a historic 
hearing, I believe, oversight of what will be the first time 
that CEOs of all the major fossil fuel companies--Exxon, 
Chevron, BP, and others----
    Mr. Norman. Madam Chairwoman?
    Chairwoman Maloney.--will be here before our committee. So 
at this point----
    Mr. Norman. Can I ask----
    Chairwoman Maloney.--may we get back to the item that we 
are----
    Mr. Comer. Point of order, Madam Chair. Point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney. We are getting back to----
    Mr. Comer. Point of order.
    Chairwoman Maloney.--recognizing the gentlelady----
    Mr. Comer. Point of order, Madam Chair.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Explain your point of order.
    Mr. Norman. Since you mentioned me by name, can I have a 
point of order and ask a question of you?
    Chairwoman Maloney. Sure.
    Mr. Norman. You have named some hearings, but none of which 
addressed any of the 20 letters that he mentioned. Will you 
agree now to let us hold at least one or two hearings on 
specifics that Chairman Comer has asked for?
    Chairwoman Maloney. We will take it under consideration.
    Mr. Norman. That means ``no.''
    Chairwoman Maloney. And, Mr. Comer, you wish to be 
recognized?
    Mr. Comer. Madam Chair, I just wanted to fact check that 
about the level of oversight this hearing has provided over the 
past nine months. The Lugar Center gave the Oversight Committee 
and ``F'' grade on oversight. So we have a lot of crises in 
America right now, and I believe we could be doing more in this 
committee to provide oversight to the American people for 
exactly what created these crises----
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you.
    Mr. Comer [continuing]. And how they can be solved.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. Thank you. Ms. Bush, you are now 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you. And let me first start by saying, Ms. 
Milano, I apologize that you had to endure such a cruel, 
callous, and sexist question line presented by my colleague.
    St. Louis and I thank you, Madam Chair, for convening this 
hearing. Equal rights for everyone are still not codified in 
this country, and it shows. Ratifying the ERA after over a 
century of struggle will help advance social, economic, and 
racial justice. It will improve the lived experiences for black 
women who are disproportionately affected by inequality and 
inequity in this country. It is not surprising that the 
slaveholders--all white men--who wrote the Constitution did not 
write in equal rights across genders, and it is not surprising 
that their disregard for gender equity has disproportionately 
harmed black women, brown women, indigenous women, and trans 
women.
    In my district and in districts across the country, black 
women are subjected to harmful policies that make us more 
likely to be evicted, be underpaid, die during childbirth, lack 
access to abortion, and be victims of domestic violence, sexual 
assault, and police brutality. Notice I said ``and,'' ``and,'' 
``and,'' and ``and.'' In 2020, four black women and girls were 
murdered per day in our country. Racial inequality is a crisis 
in this country, and it is crucial we recognize and acknowledge 
the impact that ERA would have on our community.
    Ms. Jenkins, passing the ERA is a racial justice issue. How 
would it help women of color, specifically black women, if the 
ERA were ratified?
    Ms. Jenkins. Thank you so much for your question, and for 
your experience, and for your bravery, and your support of the 
Equal Rights Amendment. I think what we saw during the pandemic 
was something that most of us thought was true, but some of us 
didn't want to face and some of us still don't want to face, 
and that is the extraordinary gap in access to absolutely 
everything this country says that it gives to its citizens. And 
we found out who the essential workers were, and we found out 
what the essential workers were, and we found out that most of 
the essential workers were black women, women of color, 
underpaid, raising families, trying to feed their children, 
trying to give them shelter, and extraordinarily more and more 
difficult to do so. In some cases, we see that this discrepancy 
in the work force is that women have not been able to go back 
to work because they are taking care of their children. And in 
some cases, black women, women of color, have to go back even 
though they have children because there is no way, you know, to 
take care of the food and the shelter.
    Ms. Bush. Right.
    Ms. Jenkins. So we have this crisis in this country. You 
know, one of the things I wake up in the morning and I hear 
this: 250,000 women went missing last year. A hundred thousand 
of those were women of color or trans women. Is anybody looking 
for them? And the answer that we are afraid of is that, no, 
they are not because women are not valued and because women of 
color and black women are not valued. The Equal Rights 
Amendment is what we need to finally establish, you know, that 
we are all full citizens of this country.
    Ms. Bush. Right.
    Ms. Jenkins. And that we all deserve the rights and the 
protections and the recourse.
    Ms. Bush. Yes.
    Ms. Jenkins. And so this is what we believe will do it.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you.
    Ms. Jenkins. The Constitution is the problem. The 
Constitution has to be fixed. Nothing else will do it.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for 
your comment, your response. It is also not surprising that 
women of color and clear women of color are leading the fight 
for gender equity. Today black and indigenous women face higher 
rates of domestic violence than any other groups. We see 
achieving gender equality, which you just talked to, we see 
achieving gender equality as a fundamental piece of achieving 
justice and ensuring our very survival at a moment when LGBTQ+ 
community women, the black community, are under attack like 
never before. We must advocate for policies that protect our 
rights and our dignity with the force of law.
    Ms. Salcedo, I was struck by your written testimony that 
without the ERA, the Equality Act may lack the constitutional 
standing to effectively protect trans women and trans women of 
color. So why do we need ERA in addition to, like, laws like 
the Equality Act to protect trans women of color in our 
communities?
    Ms. Salcedo. Thank you so much. The ERA is very clear. I 
mean, we need constitutional protection for all peoples, and, 
you know, the Equality Act, unfortunately, does not do that. 
The Constitution will do that when the ERA, it is there.
    Ms. Bush. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Ms. Salcedo. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back.
    And the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Keller, is 
recognized for five minutes. Mr. Keller.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I would like to 
thank all of our witnesses for taking time to be here today.
    First and foremost, let me state that every American 
deserves to be treated equally. Putting aside the arguments for 
or against the Equal Rights Amendment, or the ERA, the 
ratification deadline for this measure ended over four decades 
ago. It seems like we are back in 1979 under the Carter 
Administration when the ratification deadline for the ERA 
passed the first time. We were dealing with the same rising gas 
prices, rising energy prices, rising inflation, and even 
Americans were being held hostage. If this is the Democrats' 
version of progress, Americans have clearly stated they want 
none of it.
    The ERA failed to be ratified in 1979 and then again in 
1982 when Congress tried again and failed to extend the 
ratification period. Americans know the ERA is as unnecessary 
today as it was 40 years ago. Our citizens are protected under 
the umbrella of existing laws that shield them from sex 
discrimination or any kind of discrimination, including the 
Fourteenth Amendment, the Nineteenth Amendment, the Equal Pay 
Act of 1963, and the Civil Rights of 1964. These provisions 
already make it illegal for employers to discriminate based on 
sex. In January 2020, more women held positions than men in the 
paid work force. However, 55 percent of all jobs lost during 
the pandemic had been occupied by women. So I have a question, 
Ms. Stepman. Why are women-held positions disproportionately 
affected by COVID-19?
    Ms. Stepman. I think that is a question you should take up 
with Randi Weingarten, who is the head of the National Teachers 
Association. Look, we have heard a lot about European countries 
in this hearing generally, usually comparing America dis-
favorably to them. But in most European countries, schools 
reopened in person just after a matter of weeks, you know, 6, 
8, 12 weeks, meaning they opened in summer or fall of 2020. 
American schools in many states remain closed to in-person 
learners for far longer, to the extent that even just a couple 
months ago, many families were dealing with the reality of 
school closures and having to, what Mary Katherine Hamm, as she 
delightfully puts it, Zoom butler their children at school. So 
I suspect that this is one of the reasons that women 
disproportionately had to leave the work force during the 
pandemic, because as much as many try to fight against it, 
women still choose to take more of the childcare 
responsibilities and family responsibilities in the home. And 
so disproportionately, they decided to leave the work force 
when their children couldn't attend school. So, again, I 
suggest you take that up with Randi Weingarten.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you. Thank you for that answer. Looking 
at Pew's recent survey of American fathers and mothers, it 
states that 82 percent of fathers report that they prefer to 
work full time, while only 51 percent of mothers say the same. 
What might this tell us about the choices and preferences made 
by men and women? Any thoughts on that?
    Ms. Stepman. Sure. Men and women, on aggregate, have 
different choices and preferences. This is not discrimination. 
I reject the idea that because a disparity exists, 
automatically that means that there is a discrimination at play 
here. Unfortunately, the ERA, I think, could potentially lead 
to us taking some of these disparities as discrimination, which 
would mean that the ERA would be set against the choices of 
actual American women about how they want to balance their 
lives, their careers, and their families. That is not progress 
for women, in my book.
    Mr. Keller. OK. Thank you. And, Ms. Stepman, how can 
lawmakers help support women entering the work force or staying 
at home with their children, or a combination of the two?
    Ms. Stepman. Well, I mean, I am sure that is a much larger 
subject than I can touch in a few seconds. But for starters, 
just to return to the issue of schools for a moment, it would 
provide them with better education for their children and 
educational options for their children. States that provide 
school choice, for example. In those states, during the 
pandemic, families were allowed to use those programs to then 
take their kids to the overwhelming majority of private schools 
that opened last fall for in-person instruction. But in states 
where those programs didn't exist, those opportunities didn't 
exist. And, again, as we opened this questioning, those burdens 
fell disproportionately on mothers, on women.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you. And, Madam Chair, I do have a letter 
here from Students for Life that I would like to submit as part 
of the record.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Without objection.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, is now 
recognized.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank 
you so much for holding this incredibly important hearing. I 
will just note that I feel quite certain that if white men in 
this country faced the discrimination and inequality that women 
across the country of all genders and races faced, that you 
would see aggressive advocacy on the other side of the aisle in 
support of the Equal Rights Amendment for men. And choice of 
whether and where and when you work is just that. If you did a 
survey and if you look at surveys, when women are asked if they 
think that the Equal Rights Amendment should pass, they 
overwhelmingly support it. I think that is important to note 
for the record.
    And constitutional amendments, Madam Chair, have always 
served as a signpost for where society needs to go, and the ERA 
is no different. Beyond clarifying our values, the ERA will 
have a concrete impact on the most marginalized. There are two 
major ways that the ERA will impact the legal status of women 
and all marginalized genders: through litigation and 
legislation. And first, I want to turn to litigation. Since 
2016, there has been a steady rise in the number of Federal 
pregnancy discrimination lawsuits, and the pandemic has only 
accelerated this disturbing trend. As a mother of three 
children, I was fortunate that I didn't face this kind of 
workplace discrimination, but I know that compounding layers of 
economic factors, racism in the workplace, and inaccessibility 
of paid family and medical leave make many pregnant women 
vulnerable to this unlawful treatment.
    Ms. Smeal, it is good to see you and a hearty ``Go 
Gators,'' I would say that since we share an alma mater. But is 
it correct that the ERA could improve litigation outcomes for 
sex or pregnancy discrimination cases?
    Ms. Smeal. Absolutely. There is a Pregnancy Discrimination 
Act, but it isn't as comprehensive as the Equal Rights 
Amendment would be. And as we know, there is a lot of pregnancy 
discrimination in employment.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And certainly increasing. Thank you. 
And I want to drill down and explore how the ERA could affect a 
specific legal claim in my home state of Florida. On the first 
day of Pride Month, the Governor of Florida signed a horrendous 
law banning trans girls from playing on sports teams with other 
girls. Ms. Salcedo, as a trans woman and advocate for the trans 
community through your organization, can you explain the impact 
of this legislation on trans youth?
    Ms. Salcedo. Thank you so much. I think, you know, this 
type of legislation obviously denies the opportunities for 
young people to participate and to just have the ability to 
engage in sports and in the things that people need to 
participate, particularly young people. It definitely devalues 
their existence. So this type of legislation has continued to 
really denigrate our community, and it is very damaging.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Professor Nourse, how 
might the ERA influence outcomes when judges review laws like 
this transphobic sports ban given the decision in Bostock v. 
Clayton County?
    Ms. Nourse. Thank you for asking me that. The Supreme Court 
decided a case called Bostock recently, in which the question 
was whether Title VII covered transgender and sexual 
orientation discrimination, and the Court said, as a matter of 
statutory interpretation, that they were covered in Bostock. 
But that is a statute. It is not the Constitution. And so the 
Court has recognized the word ``sex'' for statutory 
interpretation includes these categories, but it is not clear 
that that would actually operate in the same way 
constitutionally. The Court has not actually addressed that. So 
as far as a state law that discriminated against transgender 
folks, the Equal Rights Amendment would allow challenges to 
that law based on the interpretation of the word ``sex'' in an 
opinion by Justice Gorsuch for a majority of this Court.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. And we cannot afford to let Florida 
put the transgender community in danger for 1 second longer. It 
is clear that without the added protections of the ERA, we 
can't be certain that transphobic laws like this will be 
repealed by our court system. I want to just get a question in 
with Senator McClellan because, in addition to litigation, the 
ERA will enable legislatures to enact, and governments to 
enforce, more robust laws that protect women and other 
vulnerable groups. So, Senator, how would an equality provision 
in the Constitution give legislators like yourself a new 
constitutional hook for legislation that protects women and 
other vulnerable groups?
    Ms. McClellan. Thank you for that question because it gives 
me an opportunity to address what we have heard over and over 
about choices that women make that impact the wages that they 
receive and also whether they stay in the work force. When you 
are not allowed sufficient time to recover from childbirth, or 
when the father is not allowed sufficient paternity leave to 
care for a child or to stay home to take care of a child when 
school is closed, or when you don't have childcare, then the 
ERA gives extra protections to allow state legislatures or 
Congress to address those through paid family medical leave 
laws, pregnancy discrimination laws, or similar laws that give 
women who become mothers actual choices, and not choices that 
are limited by their employer, or a state, or a policymaker's 
view of them as the primary caregiver in a family, even if in 
that family they choose that it be the father's role.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Madam Chair, I think we have made 
clear why we need a constitutional protection for equality 
established for women, and I appreciate your decades of support 
and leadership on this issue. I yield back the balance of my 
time.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. The 
gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Clyde, is now recognized. Mr. 
Clyde.
    Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is becoming 
increasingly common for this committee to hold sham hearings on 
legislation that has already passed the House. We did it three 
weeks ago with the abortion-on-demand-until-birth act, and we 
are doing it again today. I wonder why this is. Oh, that is 
right. It is because holding these sham hearings is nothing 
more than an unapologetic ploy to give the media something to 
talk about other than the Democratic Party's policy failures 
and lack of action when it comes to agreeing on how to govern 
in the best interest of the people. We are facing an inflation 
crisis, and President Biden and his allies in Congress are 
carelessly adding fuel to the inflationary fire by advancing 
their $1.2 trillion--only 99 percent infrastructure--bill and 
$4.3-trillion-big-government-socialist spending package. 
Hearings such as the one we are holding right now on ERA are 
neither productive, nor are they applicable to the current 
issues facing our country. Simply put, they hold as much weight 
as wearing a politically tailored outfit to a star-studded 
affair.
    Over the past year, the so-called Equal Rights Amendment 
has become both a ridiculous fashion statement and a battle cry 
for many who fail to recognize the progress the United States 
has made since the 1970's, but this does not change the fact 
that the ERA is no longer necessary or applicable. The truth 
that many of my colleagues have ignored is that men and women 
are already considered equals under the Constitution. In fact, 
in many states, women are rightfully offered extra protections, 
such as sex-segregated hospital rooms, prisons, and shelters, 
protections the ERA would jeopardize.
    My first question is for Ms. Stepman. Thank you for being 
here today, ma'am. I appreciate your testimony.
    Ms. Stepman. I am honored to be here. Thank you.
    Mr. Clyde. Would you please share briefly with us how the 
ERA would affect women's safety and privacy through elimination 
of sex-segregated facilities?
    Ms. Stepman. Sure. I would be happy to do that. I have 
already mentioned the effect on women's prisons----
    Mr. Clyde. Right.
    Ms. Stepman [continuing]. Where men and women potentially 
would have to be integrated within prisons and even prison 
cells when those cells include more than one person. There are 
many other consequences, though, if we require the law to be 
completely blind to the fact that sex differences exist. I also 
mentioned pat downs in the airport, bathrooms, locker rooms, 
any kind of facility. Any kind of public school, whether that 
is on the university level or the K-12 level, has separated for 
boys and girls any sports teams connected to those public 
schools, which we were already having this conversation. But 
men jump 25 percent higher, throw 25 percent further, run 11 
percent faster, accelerate 20 percent faster. They punch 30 to 
162 percent harder, and they are overall 30 percent stronger 
than females who are pretty much the same size. So this is two 
similarly sized females.
    You know, the ERA in Massachusetts, the state-level ERA, 
has already made a ruling the boys must be admitted to girls' 
teams. And, again, we are no longer just talking about a small 
percentage of people who are born one sex and identify as 
another and who may undergo various kinds of treatments to 
suppress some of the effects of testosterone. Now we are just 
talking about regular boys, males, who would then be admitted 
to compete against women. These are opportunities that women 
and girls, you know, cherish and that we have won over time. 
And I really think that we are downplaying how many times in 
our everyday lives as women we rely on the law to allow us, for 
example, for privacy or safety reasons, to separate ourselves 
from men temporarily.
    Mr. Clyde. Absolutely, and I would never want to take that 
away from women. That would be unjust to do that. As a 
followup, how would this legislation affect life-affirming 
healthcare facilities and physicians with religious objections 
to abortions? Would it have an effect there?
    Ms. Stepman. So the ERA's effects on abortion law, there 
has been quite a debate. There are some proponents who say it 
does not affect abortion law at all. That hasn't been true in 
the states. Both New Mexico and Connecticut with state-level 
ERAs have required under those ERAs that taxpayer funding be 
applied to abortion. And I am not specifically familiar with 
any cases on position conscience rights, but generally, the ERA 
could provide an alternative basis to continue having a right 
to abortion in the Constitution. And, in fact, most pro-choice 
groups acknowledge that. For example, NARAL has acknowledged 
that on their website and has cheered the ERA for that reason.
    Mr. Clyde. OK. Thank you. So not only would passage of ERA 
impose dangerous policies that would strip women of necessary 
protections and force taxpayer funding of abortion. It would 
also circumvent the legitimate constitutional amendment 
process. Differences of opinion and policy aside, the 1972 
Equal Rights Amendment deadline expired nearly four decades 
ago. Legislators are attempting to resurrect a dead amendment. 
Even the late liberal icon, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, noted 
that the only way the ERA can be added to the Constitution 
would be to introduce it anew. Even having been a supporter of 
ERA, Ginsburg recognized there was no path by which you can 
move forward while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the 
ratification deadline passed more than four decades ago. Even 
if supporters of this amendment sincerely believe it was still 
necessary, I imagine they would be willing to follow the 
guidelines prescribed in the U.S. Constitution, but they are 
not. Instead, Democrats are choosing to shoehorn through 
Congress a constitutionally questionable measure.
    To that end, Madam Chair, I once again implore you to use 
this committee's limited time and resources to gather expert 
knowledge on issues that are both current and within the 
committee's jurisdiction. To do anything else is a shameful 
waste of our constituents' tax dollars----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Clyde [continuing]. And only allows for more White 
House policy failures without proper committee oversight. And 
with that, I yield back, Madam.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlewoman from California, Jackie Speier, is 
recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would also like to 
remind Mr. Clyde that it was Antonin Scalia who said when he 
was asked does the Constitution require discrimination based on 
sex, he said no. But he then further said, ``The Constitution 
does not prohibit discrimination based on sex,'' and he 
implored the legislature to take action to provide that kind of 
protection and anti-discrimination language in the 
Constitution. Again, we are one of a handful of countries in 
the advanced world that do not have this protection for women.
    I want to thank all the panelists again for their advocacy 
and their great work. This week marks the fourth-year 
anniversary of the Me Too movement in addition to being the 
month in which we observe the tragedy of domestic violence in 
our country. In 2017, our witness, Alyssa Milano tweeted, and I 
quote, ``If all the women who have been sexually harassed or 
assaulted wrote `Me Too' as a status, we might give people a 
sense of the magnitude of the problem.'' Since then, the 
phrase, originally founded in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke, 
has been shared millions of times all over the world where Me 
Too survivors declared ``Time's Up,'' for perpetrators who 
abuse with impunity. We had members here in Congress who 
engaged in sexual harassment and who are now being held 
accountable, and new laws are on the book.
    All of these people have demanded safety in their 
workplaces, schools, homes, and in the military, yet four years 
later, we still face an epidemic of violence against women. 
Every two minutes, another American is sexually assaulted, and 
more than three women are murdered by their partners in the 
United States every day. Constitutional scholars, such as Dean 
Chemerinsky, believe that the Equal Rights Amendment will have 
some of its greatest impact on violence against women.
    Ms. Nourse, can you elaborate on how the Equal Rights 
Amendment will strengthen the rights of survivors by providing 
a constitutional anchor for gender equality, and what are some 
of the examples of the ways the courts have not respected the 
rights of victims?
    Ms. Nourse. Thank you very much for that question. In 
United States v. Morrison in 2000, the Supreme Court struck 
down Congress' bipartisan attempt to give rights to sexual 
assault survivors and domestic violence survivors to sue the 
perpetrators of that abuse. Why? Because the law is unequal. 
State laws remain unequal. And so what they have done is the 
Court has said, no, this is unconstitutional. So what the Equal 
Rights Amendment would do is provide a way for Congress to re-
enact laws like this and provide a firm constitutional basis 
for it. Right now if Morrison is the law, Congress has no 
power. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, this was an explicit 
Fourteenth Amendment holding and an explicit Commerce Clause 
holding.
    What happens is that under Title VII, under a number of 
statutes, your rights end with commerce, OK? So if you are out 
of the workplace, if you are a gymnast, if you work in the gig 
economy, Title VII is a very limited remedy. And the problem is 
that the Court has said that your rights are fine in 
employment, but once you get outside of employment, I mean, 
sexual harassment occurs in all sorts of places in our society 
and sexual assault does as well. Look at the members of the 
military. All they want to do is serve their country. They 
can't sue anyone for what happened. They get very little 
protection from the military. We have been trying to do with 
that for decades.
    Ms. Speier. That is right.
    Ms. Nourse. So this would allow much greater protection for 
women because Congress could then enact laws. The Supreme Court 
says you have no power to. You don't have to believe what 
Justice Scalia said or what Justice Ginsburg said about the 
Equal Rights Amendment. All you have to do is look at United 
States v. Morrison. That is one case. In Jessica Lenahan's 
case, they said, well, you know, a domestic violence protective 
order says, oh, you must arrest. Well, Justice Scalia in 
another opinion said, oh, that doesn't really mean you have to 
arrest. There is always discretion not to arrest, so you have 
no rights with respect to that.
    There is impunity by state officials. When I did research 
in my practicum, I found out that a third of the cases brought 
under the original VAWA civil rights remedy were state police 
officers, prison guards, other officials who actually committed 
sexual assault or harassment of individuals under their care 
protection. That should be a violation of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, but why can't you sue them? Qualified immunity, so 
there is no recourse. ERA would fix that.
    Ms. Speier. Thank you very much, Ms. Nourse, and thank you 
for your legal scholarship as well. My time has expired, and I 
yield back.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. [Presiding.] Thank you. The 
gentlelady yields back.
    Mr. Comer, you are recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you, Madam Chair. There have been recent 
references to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's comments. Madam Chair, I 
ask for unanimous consent to add to the record Justice 
Ginsburg's comments suggesting that she believes the 1982 
deadline should be considered binding, and that she would 
``like to see a new beginning for ERA ratification.''
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Without objection.
    Chairwoman Maloney. [Presiding.] Without objection.
    Mr. Comer. Thank you. And I, again, want to thank the 
witnesses for all being here today. Ms. Stepman, would you like 
to elaborate on the rescissions of the ERA by the states in the 
past?
    Ms. Stepman. I would. Thank you. So overwhelmingly, the 
theory that ERA proponents are advancing, the three-state 
solution, this modern ratification, I do think contradicts the 
spirit of Article V at the most basic level, right? The reason 
that we have all of these very difficult procedures--three-
fourths of the states, two-thirds of both houses of Congress--
is to ensure the overwhelming popularity of whatever we are 
adding to the highest law of the land. And the theory they are 
advancing will have no time limits and no rescission. And, in 
fact, you mentioned Justice Ginsburg. In those same remarks and 
in some remarks in 2019, she pointed out the unfairness of 
that. If you are going to extend the timeline for ratification 
indefinitely, then it is completely unfair not to allow states 
to change their minds before the amendment is ultimately 
passed, ratified, and inscribed in the Constitution.
    But fundamentally, we haven't really had a conversation 
about all the consequences that we are talking about today with 
the ERA because we have had this short-circuited three-state 
ratification procedure. As I mentioned in my initial testimony, 
62 percent of our electorate was either not of age to vote or 
not even born--for example, myself--not even born the last time 
we had this conversation about the consequences. And indeed, 
that bipartisan sort of consensus about the ERA and its 
consequences dissolved exactly because we had a vociferous 
public debate in which lots of different states and all of our 
electorate were able to weigh in on those consequences. And 
American women, who make up the majority of voters, were able 
to weigh in on whether or not they want to be treated exactly 
like men in every single circumstance. Unfortunately, we 
haven't had the opportunity to have that kind of debate because 
most of America still thinks this died in the 70's.
    Mr. Comer. Would you agree, Ms. Stepman, before the COVID-
19 pandemic, that women were doing pretty well in the United 
States by several metrics, including low unemployment, wealth, 
and political power?
    Ms. Stepman. That is correct. Before the pandemic, women 
not only owned the majority of wealth. We get the majority of 
both undergraduate and graduate degrees. We had the lowest 
unemployment rate since we started recording female 
unemployment all the way back in the 1950's in 2019. So to 
present women as though they are second-class citizens in the 
United States, I just truly and deeply disagree with that 
presentation. You know, I am not a second-class citizen because 
UVA can have a sorority on campus. That does not, to me, rise 
to the level of second-class citizenship or discrimination. 
What we are talking about is the law recognizing a small number 
of instances in which those differences really do matter. And I 
think that recognizing those differences is very, very 
important to the freedoms and opportunities and safety that 
American women rely on.
    Mr. Comer. And I agree with that, and that goes along with 
my point. We, the Republicans on this side of the aisle, we 
have been very critical of the Democrat shutdowns during COVID, 
and all the metrics and data that I have looked at show that 
they adversely affected women more than men. Can you describe 
how the Democrat-led COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns of businesses 
and schools have harmed women?
    Ms. Stepman. Absolutely. As I mentioned before, I think the 
single biggest factor in that disparity is likely the fact that 
schools remain closed long, long after we knew. We have one big 
positive thing, right, in this pandemic, this horrible pandemic 
which I think is the worst in 100 years. One blessing that we 
have had is that it largely spares young children. And indeed, 
other countries have recognized that, which is why most 
European countries went back to school in May 2020. So I think 
that has been the single biggest factor in holding women back 
during this pandemic has been the lack and availability of 
open, in-person public schooling.
    Mr. Comer. I agree completely. Thank you, and, Madam Chair, 
I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentlelady, Ms. Pressley, is now recognized for five 
minutes. Thank you.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, for today's 
hearing on the need to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Many 
would have us believe that the ERA has always been a battle led 
and fought by white women, that it has always been a white 
woman's battle for white women's gain, but as is so often the 
case, this is a false narrative. We have seen this throughout 
history, an effort to erase the women of color who have served 
as trailblazers, table shakers, and justice seekers in the 
fight for gender equality. So allow me to bring my ancestors 
into this room.
    More than 70 years ago, black suffragist, civil rights 
activist, and first president of the National Association of 
Colored Women, Mary Church Terrell, testified before this House 
in support of the ERA. In 1970, Pauli Murray, a revolutionary 
black queer lawyer and scholar, testified before the Senate 
Judiciary and reminded legislators that black women had the 
most to gain by passing the ERA. She famously said, ``I suggest 
that what the opponents of the amendment fear is not equal 
rights, but equal power and responsibility.'' Now, Senator 
McClellan, you also mentioned that women of color have the most 
to gain by achieving constitutional equality. Can you give us 
some specific examples of what you mean?
    Ms. McClellan. Yes, and thank you because, again, it gives 
me an opportunity to address some misconceptions about why 
women, and particularly women of color, have been 
disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Women of color 
tend to be dominating professions that are essential workers 
because for many years those were the only opportunities 
available to those women, and there are generational impacts 
because of that. Those women did not, in many cases, have 
access to health insurance. They did not have access to 
childcare. They did not have the same economic opportunities as 
their male or white counterparts, and many of them, when they 
got pregnant, were in jobs where they had to make a choice 
between immediately returning back to work because they were 
not given sufficient time off to recover or bond with their 
child. And in many cases, if their husband was in the picture, 
they were not granted enough time off to be the primary 
caregiver. So these are all generational results that go back 
to slavery and Jim Crow that have not been eliminated with a 
magic wand just because Jim Crow laws ended. And the ERA will 
allow Congress and states to pass laws to redress some of that.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you. And certainly we have seen those 
inequities exacerbated during the pandemic since, again, many 
of those essential and low-wage jobs are dominated by women of 
color, frontline jobs, who put themselves at risk and could not 
Zoom into work. I want to turn to a particular right that has 
been the center of a lot of discussion in Congress, and the 
Supreme Court, and many states throughout the country, and that 
is the right to safe and legal abortion care. Across United 
States, pregnant people of color experience systemic health 
inequities as a result of centuries of policy violence, 
including barriers to health insurance, greater stigma, and 
heightened stress caused by racism. This is certainly true in 
my district, the Massachusetts 7th, and for many others around 
the Nation. Senator McClellan, can you explain the role 
abortion care plays in advancing health and economic equity for 
historically marginalized communities and how you have seen 
that play out for your constituents in Virginia specifically?
    Ms. McClellan. Yes. The Supreme Court has long recognized 
that reproductive freedom is central to one's equality. As the 
Court ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the ability of 
women to participate equally in the economic and social life of 
the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control 
their reproductive lives. Abortion is healthcare, and the ERA 
is about gender equality in access to healthcare, and the 
workplace, and in school, and every aspect of Federal and state 
law and policy. And, in particular, black women have been 
disproportionately discriminated on the basis of pregnancy, and 
the ERA would also help with that. And as we have seen states 
begin to threaten access to abortion, the ERA can help.
    Ms. Pressley. That is right. It can help protect our right 
to bodily autonomy and to advance reproductive freedom, 
especially for the most vulnerable and marginalized. Professor 
Nourse, at a moment when abortion bans, like Texas' S.B. 8, are 
threatening pregnant people's right to healthcare, why are the 
constitutional protections of the ERA particularly important?
    Ms. Nourse. They are particularly----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired, but 
you may answer the question.
    Ms. Nourse. They are particularly important because the 
current Court has shown itself to be rather sympathetic to the 
point that the right to privacy is not in the Constitution. 
And, therefore, without actual text, without the text of the 
ERA, it may well be that the Court reverses Roe v. Wade.
    Ms. Pressley. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. The 
gentlewoman from New Mexico, Ms. Herrell, is recognized.
    Ms. Herrell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, witnesses. 
I wanted to followup with Ms. McClellan on the healthcare piece 
on that last question. So how would the Equal Rights Amendment 
affect longstanding bipartisan restrictions on Federal funding 
for abortion, such as the Hyde Amendment?
    Ms. McClellan. Abortion is healthcare, and the ERA is about 
whether any laws related to healthcare, or the workplace, or 
anything else would unduly discriminate on the basis of sex, 
period.
    Ms. Herrell. Right. My point that I want to make is I know 
we have heard about marginalized vulnerability, but I also 
think that we have a responsibility to protect those who are 
the most vulnerable, which are those babies in the womb. And I 
think when we start talking about abortion, late-term abortion, 
I think that we are moving away from really our moral compass 
and what our responsibilities are, and then we start ignoring 
who the true vulnerable are. But thank you for that.
    I want to ask Ms. Stepman a question. To me, it feels like 
we have a solution in search of a problem. How would passing 
such a bill hamper especially young women trying to go into 
college? How would this hamper their opportunities when you 
look around at college applications and now looking at 
transgender athletes, et cetera? Would there be a problem with 
that, in your opinion?
    Ms. Stepman. Yes. I actually think the ERA creates a much 
bigger problem than the accommodations for transgender 
athletes, as disruptive as those have been to the opportunities 
for women and girls. For example, Chelsea Mitchell in Canton 
High School of Connecticut, she has lost four state 
championships, all New England awards, and other honors to a 
male-bodied athlete. But Chelsea wrote in USA Today that it is 
a devastating experience. It tells me that I am not good 
enough, that my body isn't good enough, and that no matter how 
hard I work, I am unlikely to succeed because I am a woman.
    The ERA would even have a broader effect, right, because, 
again, all of this societal debate that we are having about how 
to accommodate, for example, transgender athletes, is 
ultimately about a very small percentage of the population. The 
ERA places a ban on ``discriminations'' on the basis of sex of 
all types, so it is not just a male-bodied athlete who 
identifies as female that girls will be competing against, but 
a male-bodied athlete who identifies as a boy. So when that 
girl that you mentioned goes off to college, perhaps she comes 
from a small high school where she has been competing on the 
track team and she gets a scholarship to a public university to 
continue running track. The boy who missed the cutoff for the 
boys' team with his 100-meter dash can edge her out just on the 
basis of that score, because the only reason that that boy is 
kept off of that team is because he is a boy. That is a 
discrimination on the basis of sex and is forbidden by the 
plain language of the ERA.
    Ms. Herrell. Right. So, in my opinion, I think what we are 
doing is now we are weaponizing. Now we are using the same 
gender protection against those who would already be protected 
under this. I mean, if we are going to now see discrimination 
because of a gender situation or if we are going to be awarding 
those that are biologically men or boys over those that are 
women, then I think what we are doing is we are really 
essentially trading places. And I fear that what will be able 
to do or what we will see happen is we will use the courts then 
anytime we think that there is something running afoul, that we 
will actually squelch the voices or silence those who then, I 
think, would be hurt by this.
    And I just want to followup that same question to Ms. 
Salcedo. I mean, would you find that there is discrimination if 
someone is born a boy or a girl and then being treated 
differently in a transgender environment? Isn't that 
discrimination against a young lady who is trying to get a 
college degree by utilizing her athletic ability to get a 
scholarship and can't get in because the scholarship has been 
awarded to somebody who is obviously going to be faster or 
stronger in a certain athletic event? Does that make sense to 
you? Aren't we just reversing the discrimination, if you will?
    Ms. Salcedo. What I can tell you is really about my own 
personal experience, and I also want to say that it is really 
unfortunate that we use examples that are not necessarily real, 
right? The lives of young trans and gender non-conforming 
people are real lives, and when we use rhetoric that diminishes 
them, basically we are telling them that we are not valuing 
them.
    Ms. Herrell. I don't think that is true, though. And I 
apologize if it sounded that way because I think every human 
life has value, and I don't think it is rhetoric to say that. I 
don't think it is right to say it is rhetoric because it is 
certainly not rhetoric. I mean, I have read in the papers where 
men identifying as women have gone into, say, wrestling matches 
and actually injured, in fact, cracked the skull of a woman 
because of the strength differential. So it is all rhetoric 
because I think everybody has value regardless of what their 
gender is and regardless of what they identify as. And I am 
sorry. If you want to continue, we are just about out of time.
    Ms. Salcedo. Do you want me to answer what you just----
    Ms. Herrell. Sure.
    Ms. Salcedo. So, you know, I think that, you know, when I 
say ``rhetoric,'' really there is no research that proves that 
young people are different, right, because young people, you 
know, their bodies don't stop developing until they are 25. And 
so when we use lies that, you know, young people, and children 
specifically, are different, they are not necessarily 
different.
    Ms. Herrell. Right.
    Ms. Salcedo. They are both the same.
    Ms. Herrell. Right. Thank you for that, and really, thank 
you all for being here today. And Madam Chair, my time has 
expired.
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady yields back. The 
gentlewoman from the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton, you are 
now recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this important 
hearing. Fifty years ago this very month, the House of 
Representatives passed the Equal Rights Amendment with 
overwhelming bipartisan support. As a former chair of the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission, I can tell you that even 
though the momentum behind the ERA waned after the first major 
push passed, the need for it never has. If the Constitution is 
silent on women's rights, other than the right to vote, and it 
took us some time to get that right, we find ourselves fighting 
the same fights for equality over and over again, fighting hard 
just not to lose the rights we already have.
    Professor Nourse, let me begin with you. How does the ERA 
help make sure that gender equality is not dependent upon the 
political leanings of the Supreme Court justices, and how would 
it affect the standard by which gender discrimination cases are 
considered by the Supreme Court?
    Ms. Nourse. Well, thank you, and I say hello to a former 
member of the faculty of Georgetown Law. Thank you for that 
question. I believe the Equal Rights Amendment would, in fact, 
support a stronger standard of review with respect to 
legislation that has passed which denies equality, as well as 
allow more legislation by Congress which supports equality. But 
I want to clarify this because we have had a lot of 
conversation here about sex differences being banned. No 
sororities, sports teams, you know. That is not what this is 
about.
    The amendment does not require enforced equality in a sort 
of precise way. It doesn't ban same-sex schools. That requires 
you to think that strict scrutiny, which is a legal term 
associated with the highest of rights which is likely to be 
invoked under the amendment, is actually fatal in fact, and 
that is not good law. We have shown in the race discrimination 
and affirmative action cases, as you know, Ms. Norton, that 
strict scrutiny is not necessarily fatal to legislation. So if 
there were a compelling reason for a particular kind of sex 
difference, that could still be sustained under the Equal 
Rights Amendment, in my opinion.
    Ms. Norton. That is a very important answer to get, and I 
certainly appreciate it. Ms. Smeal, gender discrimination has 
persisted over the last 50 years. The harms from discrimination 
have long-term effects on individuals, and entrenched 
inequality has consequences for the Nation as well. Ms. Smeal, 
you were around for the first go-round of the ERA fight in 
Congress. Many people attribute the failure to ratify then to 
prominent women who fought against it. What do you think was 
the real reason the ERA wasn't ratified then, who was behind 
the opposition, and what motivated them to oppose equality for 
women?
    Ms. Smeal. Thank you for that question.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Mic, please.
    Ms. Smeal. Thank you. Women were blamed. Schlafly was given 
credit, but the reality is we had every major woman's 
organization on our side. In one demonstration alone, 400,000 
telegrams were sent in to urge passing of the extension. We did 
so many events. They would have a few hundred people. We would 
have a few thousand, and the press would try to balance it out. 
Who was really behind it? The Chambers of Commerce, the 
National Association of Manufacturers, and the insurance 
companies were big lobbyists against us. Insurance----
    Ms. Norton. Why were they against it?
    Ms. Smeal. Well, the insurance companies even put an ad out 
saying--Aetna did--``Our Case for Sex Discrimination.'' At that 
time, health insurance, auto insurance, annuities, pension 
plans--I could go on--all discriminated on the basis of sex. 
And if you look at it overall, we had a whole NOW project on 
insurance discrimination just in auto insurance alone. Although 
some argue that men paid more, if you had it based on miles 
driven, women were paying far more. If you looked at health 
insurance, it was very discriminatory. As I said before, it 
frequently did not cover pregnancy and usually charged women 
between 150 and 200 percent more for the same coverage. If you 
looked at pension plans, women were charged more because 
supposedly they live longer, but we could show that that 
difference wasn't as much as people had in their mind. In other 
words, they were taken advantage of in there, too.
    I could go on, but basically that was always kept as a 
woman's fight, like it was a catfight when there was a lot of 
vested interest in keeping women in a certain position. We talk 
about essential workers all the time, but they were forced to 
work at minimum wage because, in fact, there weren't that many 
opportunities for women. There was mass discrimination against 
them. And I also felt that we had terrible problems from some 
universities. The University of Florida, I will just give you 
an example. I was an alumni. My master's degree is from there. 
It was a very progressive part of the state, but the senator 
from there was always against it. And why was he against it? 
Because he thought the Gators would lose money because, 
obviously, in most universities, a disproportionate amount of 
money is put on male sports versus female sports. So there is 
all----
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentlelady's time has expired and 
wrap up.
    Ms. Smeal. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK. We now recognize the gentleman from 
Georgia. Mr. Johnson, you are now recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for your 
work, your tireless effort in promoting and bringing about the 
opportunity for this Equal Rights Amendment to become law. And 
also thank you, my dear colleague, Eleanor Holmes Norton, for 
all that you have done in that regard, and I want to thank the 
witnesses for their testimony today.
    When the U.S. Constitution was drafted to protect the 
rights of ``we the people,'' at that time ``people'' meant 
white men, and it did not mean women at all. One hundred and 
forty years later and with the passage of the Nineteenth 
Amendment, women gained the right to vote. However, this 
essential milestone has proven insufficient to bring equal 
opportunity to women across America. To this day, despite 
making up more than half of our population, women still earn 
less of what men earn for the same job, and this disparity is 
even worse for women of color. It is past time to ratify the 
Equal Rights Amendment, which would guarantee equal rights for 
women under the Constitution, and I am a proud supporter and 
co-sponsor of H.J. Res. 17, which will remove the arbitrary 
deadline of 1972 for ratification of the Equal Rights 
Amendment. Now that 38 states have passed the amendment, all 
that remains is for Congress to approve this bipartisan 
legislation.
    Ms. Milano, The Guardian reports that the wage gap between 
actors and actresses in the film industry is significantly 
greater than most other industries. Men make about $1.1 million 
more per film than their similarly experienced female co-stars. 
What kind of sense can you make of that gross pay disparity 
that exists within the film industry, and what does it say 
about equal rights for men and women in your industry?
    Ms. Milano. Thank you, Congressman, for your question. For 
every dollar a man makes, the average woman makes 82 cents, 
with black women earning 62 cents to the dollar, Native women 
earning 57 cents, and Latinas earning 54 cents to the dollar. 
This is not different in my industry. And I would also like to 
add that we have heard a lot from our Republican friends about 
our economy and about women getting back to work. Women do not 
have the choices to be equal parts in our economy, and it has 
been researched that if we were equal partners in our economy, 
it would boost our economy $4.3 trillion over the next 10 years 
as per the ERA Coalition's research.
    So what are we hoping for? In my industry, but mostly for 
the most vulnerable women, we are looking for equal pay for 
equal work, prevention of discrimination in hiring, firing, 
promotion, and benefits, protecting women from pregnancy 
discrimination, and it would provide a constitutional basis for 
claims of gender violence. The modern woman needs the ERA to 
provide protections against the rolling back of the advances in 
women's rights that have already been achieved. And when we 
talk about women having choices, I just want to say that most 
of the time we are not given choices. There are certain jobs 
that we can do as women or we are allowed to do as women, most 
in hospitality, or domestic work, or frontline workers. So I 
really resent the notion that women are making different 
choices. We have different opportunities, and part of that is 
because of having no constitutional equality.
    We are just looking for equal protections, equal 
opportunity, equal rights. And if we are treated as anything 
less than human, we also ask for equal recourse. Thank you.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you. Ms. Nourse, the seven-year 
ratification period is not a constitutional requirement for the 
passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Would you agree?
    Ms. Nourse. That is correct.
    Mr. Johnson. And so why are we hanging our hats on that? 
Why is it that that folks are using that arbitrary ratification 
deadline as a means to deny formal adoption of the Equal Rights 
Amendment?
    Chairwoman Maloney. The gentleman's time has expired, but 
you may answer the question.
    Ms. Nourse. I believe that the fight against the ERA has 
always been about distraction. So when it was first fought in 
the 20's, it was about labor. Then it was about gay rights. We 
got to find something. No one is really against equality for 
women. Ninety-four percent of people approve of it. So people 
get distracted by things that are not important to the legal 
questions here. Congress has the authority to extend the 
deadline if necessary.
    Mr. Johnson. Thank you, and I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman from Vermont, 
Mr. Welch, is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Welch. Thank you very much. You know, I really 
appreciate the testimony of all the witnesses and much has been 
said, and I can't, even with my questions, add too much. But I 
will just ask if any of the witnesses--I think this will be 
almost probably the final words--Professor Nourse, is there 
anything that we have left out, anything that you can say to 
folks who are resistant to the passage of the Equal Rights 
Amendment that you would like to say?
    Ms. Nourse. Well, thank you for that. I will just repeat 
what I said. Don't get distracted by slippery slope arguments. 
``Oh, really bad things are going to happen.'' I mean, they 
have been saying that about the Equal Rights Amendment for a 
very, very long time, maybe 100 years. These are speculation. 
So I would hope we would fix our focus on what we do know, and 
what we do know is that the Supreme Court has not allowed 
Congress to enact legislation to protect pregnancy 
discrimination. We have legislation, but they have not said the 
pregnancy discrimination is actually constitutionally barred. 
They have not allowed Congress to pass legislation with respect 
to gender violence. And it is an important constitutional 
insurance policy given the current Court, which will, in fact, 
in my view, because of its jurisprudential philosophy, turn 
many protections that women have, I would they think they would 
restrict them in ways that most people would not appreciate.
    Mr. Welch. They are really at risk. I agree with that. 
Thanks. And, Ms. Jenkins, can you speak to the way, you know, 
this current patchwork of state and Federal laws fails to 
protect women's rights and guarantee equality under the law?
    Ms. Jenkins. As has been said by my sister panelists as 
well, what the Equal Rights Amendment will do and what we 
desperately need is fundamental constitutional underpinning of 
the rights of women and girls. Listening recently to the 
discussion about the Violence Against Women Act, and the 
opposition to that, and the delay in the reauthorization of it, 
we cannot by piecemeal give fundamental equality. It doesn't 
work. Every season gives us another chance to detract from full 
citizenship and from full lifesaving rights. So we really, I 
think, in this country need to come to grips with the fact that 
that the Constitution does not fully support girls and women. 
We need to do that. Let's get the Equal Rights Amendment.
    Some people have said, you know, well, it is just a symbol, 
you know. I say, yes, like, you know, the flag. All right. Give 
it to us. We need that symbol as well as the legal rights that 
go with it. We need young girls to feel that they belong here. 
We need women to not be engaged in this constant quest for 
equality and for rights. At a recent rally in the streets, you 
know, it was a big crowd, and I said, I am so glad to see you 
all here, but let's not keep doing this. It has, of course, 
passed, the Equal Rights Amendment, but let's get two things 
that we need: the DOJ memo lifted, and, in the Senate, the time 
limit removed. Let's do those two things and move on.
    You know, a full century is enough time to have women in a 
begging position. We are tired of that. We want our rights, and 
now is the time to do it. It is the best time that we have to 
do this now. Thank you for the question.
    Mr. Welch. Well, thank you very much for your advocacy and 
your eloquence. I can't add any more to that, Madam Chair, so I 
yield back, and I thank our panelists for their wonderful 
presentations.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Sarbanes, is recognized.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much, Madam Chair. I, too, don't 
expect to speak for the entire five minutes. I mostly wanted to 
thank the panelists that you have assembled today for their 
very compelling testimony on behalf of the Equal Rights 
Amendment. I want to thank you, Madam Chair, for your tireless, 
unending efforts to make progress on this. And we have had some 
real success in the House of Representatives recently because 
of your efforts, because of the leadership of Congresswoman 
Speier and so many others of our colleagues. So I just want to 
be another person on the committee and among your colleagues to 
put that recognition and gratitude on the record.
    We know that this is bipartisan. It has been bipartisan 
from the beginning, the effort to get the Equal Rights 
Amendment passed. Any time there is a robust effort to lift it 
up, you see that bipartisan commitment. And we know as well 
that, you know, the other side, the opponents to this will sort 
of say, well, why do we need this. There is no real imperative 
here. Our society has moved to a place where this is just sort 
of a window dressing exercise. But we know from the testimony 
today that there are real and critical legal protections that 
come when we finally get the Equal Rights Amendment certified, 
and those provide protections to people in our country who can 
benefit tremendously from them. So that is very real.
    But one of the panelists a moment ago talked about the 
symbolism here, and as much as it will be a powerful symbol if 
we can ultimately and hopefully soon certify the Equal Rights 
Amendment of what America stands for in our principles, our not 
being able to get it done is also a powerful symbol. It says 
that there is still something that resides in the body politic, 
in the kind of fabric of our Nation, that keeps us from being 
able to make this important statement about who we are. So the 
failure to do this, the inability to do this, the not doing it 
is also symbolic in a negative way. And I think we want to 
overcome that, send a very powerful, positive message about 
America's commitment and principles, and also as well put in 
place, and facilitate, and fortify key legal protections that 
can flow from this.
    So again, thank you for your leadership, Madam Chair. Count 
me as----
    Chairwoman Maloney. I am going to ask my colleague, before 
you yield back----
    Mr. Sarbanes. And I yield back.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Please, please don't yield back because 
I want you to yield some of your time to Ms. Milano, who has 
some things she wants to say.
    Mr. Sarbanes. OK. Let me do that.
    Chairwoman Maloney. OK.
    Mr. Sarbanes. Ms. Milano, please, I would love to hear your 
thoughts.
    Ms. Milano. Thank you. So we have heard a lot today about 
women not needing the ERA because of the Fourteenth Amendment, 
but I want everyone to note that that came five amendments 
before the Nineteenth Amendment, which is our ability to vote. 
So clearly the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide equal 
protection or women would have, you know, been allowed to vote 
after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. Also I want to say 
we have also heard a lot today about just starting over. Let's 
start this process over. How long do we need to wait for women, 
trans women, non-binary people to be included in our founding 
document? Thank you very much.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Thank you so much. And before----
    Mr. Sarbanes. Thank you very much, Ms. Milano. The time is 
now, absolutely. Let's get this done. Chairman Maloney, thank 
you for all your terrific work and for convening this hearing 
today.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Well, thank you, and I am so 
appreciative to all the like-minded men that are trying to help 
us with this ratification. Thank you.
    Before we close, I want to offer Ranking Member Comer an 
opportunity to offer any closing remarks he may have. You are 
now recognized.
    Mr. Comer. Well, Madam Chair, and, again, I want to thank 
the witnesses for being here. And, Ms. Milano, I am a fan of 
your movies. I appreciate you being here. We all support equal 
rights, and we are very fortunate to have the Constitution that 
we have which guarantees equal rights. And I know that we have 
talked a lot on our side about unintended consequences of the 
Equal Rights Amendment, and it is important when we have 
political debate, that we debate the pros and the cons of 
legislation because a lot of times what happens is, especially 
with my friends on the Democrat side, they get caught up in the 
political correctness moment and they don't anticipate 
unintended consequences. For example, you can talk about 
climate change and the need to address climate change, and you 
can pass legislation and have policies and mandates, like the 
Biden Administration has done, that has the unintended 
consequence of gas prices going up more than 100 percent in 
less than 10 months. You can print money by the Treasury to 
help provide guaranteed income and extended unemployment and 
things like that, but the unintended consequence is inflation, 
which is a tax increase on everyone.
    You can declare a border wall is politically incorrect. The 
unintended consequence of that is, of course, open borders. 
When you have open borders, obviously the unintended 
consequence of that is you have an increase in drug smuggling 
and human trafficking. You can defund the police as a reaction 
to a bad cop or several bad policemen, which is a micro-
minority of the true actions of our overwhelmingly tremendous 
male and female police force. But when defund the police, you 
have the unintended consequence of increased crime. Again, you 
can pay people not to work and you can do things like mandate 
vaccines, but the unintended consequence of that is labor 
shortages and, of course, supply chain disruptions.
    So we are blessed to live in the United States, the 
greatest country in the world. I know that several people 
referenced other countries that may have more preferred 
language in their Constitution about equal rights. I didn't 
hear anyone say anything about Afghanistan, which this 
Administration just turned over a lot of our military weaponry 
and our very nice Air Force base to. So we have come a long way 
in the United States. We have more work to do, but I appreciate 
the opportunity to be able to have a conversation about this 
issue. And, Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time 
and look forward to having more hearings on Government 
Oversight and Reform. Thank you.
    Chairwoman Maloney. Well, thank you. The gentleman yields 
back, and I would like to really thank all of our witnesses 
today for sharing their expertise and their experience. And I 
appreciate that we managed to come to some bipartisan consensus 
that all men and women should be equally treated in this 
country. A number of our friends on the other side of the aisle 
made that statement, and the ERA is the way to achieve that. 
Legislative measures alone are not enough and are too easily 
rolled back. From my own experience, I have spent more time 
fighting to hold onto what we have than moving forward. And if 
we could have those guarantees, then the efforts of men and 
women that care about equality of treatment could be spent in 
other ways.
    I was just thinking that we have 50 years after the passage 
of the Equal Rights Amendment, and we heard from many of our 
panelists today that it is more important today than ever. And 
I couldn't help but think how would our country be different if 
we had, in fact, ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972. 
Victims of sexual violence would have the right to sue under 
the Constitution, and possibly the amount of sexual violence 
and assaults would have fallen in our country so that Alyssa 
Milano would not have had to start the Me Too movement that she 
started and worked with Tarana and others so brilliantly. Ms. 
Salcedo, who talked so movingly about your own personal 
journey. I think it is very difficult for people to share 
troubling times like that, but certainly people from 
marginalized genders would certainly likely be covered by the 
ERA and would have more protections.
    And certainly the assault that we have now in Texas is 
almost unbelievable to me. They have already rolled back under 
their draconian law the right to abortion, really. Most women 
don't even know if they are pregnant at six weeks, and I think 
it would have empowered women enough not to have had that 
happen and is happening right now. And, Carol, you spoke so 
beautifully about wanting to empower women, but particularly 
women of color, and certainly this would have given them more 
protections.
    We know that economists tell us that the No. 1 area of 
poverty in America is older women because of the unfair 
treatment in their pay translates into lower pensions, lower 
social security, lower retirement, if they have any at all, and 
certainly there would be less women in poverty in America. And 
equal pay for equal work, it hasn't budged, the gap, in 30 
years, and if you had equality in the Constitution, then you 
would be able to enforce equal pay for equal work. It is that 
simple. It would give the right to women to enforce.
    So if I had one question, I would ask the panelists to 
write for Congress how you think--you are all specialists in 
this and you have devoted your lives in it--how would America 
be different if the Equal Rights Amendment had been ratified. I 
know my life would have been extremely different, and I believe 
most women's lives. And I want to really thank not only the 
panelists, but the like-minded men in our country that have 
been our allies, that have worked side by side with us to try 
to reach a ratification. And we have waited too long, and so we 
are not giving up now, and I will continue working with all of 
you to ratify it and get women's protections into the 
Constitution for full equality. And I yield back.
    In closing, I want to thank all of our panelists for their 
remarks, and I want to commend my colleagues for participating 
in this very important conversation.
    And with that and without objection, all members have 5 
legislative days within which to submit extraneous materials 
and to submit additional written questions for the witnesses to 
the chair, which will be forwarded to the witnesses for their 
response. I ask our witnesses to please respond as promptly as 
you are able.
    Chairwoman Maloney. This hearing is adjourned.

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