This week, the Minnesota Senate passed a bill that would put the so-called Equal Rights Amendment on the 2024 ballot. This measure now heads to the Minnesota House.
As many have recognized, the ERA sounds like a good idea on the surface - after all, who doesn’t like equal rights?
But the rationale for the ERA in this day and age becomes much more confusing once you realize that discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or national origin is already illegal under federal and Minnesota law.
Minnesota Senators voted 43-23 to advance the ERA ballot question in 2024. All DFL members were joined by GOP Senators Coleman, Duckworth, Housley, Jasinski, Miller, Nelson, and Pratt.
As we will make clear below, members who voted for the ERA actually voted against protections for women and girls, because the ERA privileges men over women in women’s sports and private spaces. Regardless of party, they should be held accountable by voters in 2024.
It’s important to understand that the 2023 Minnesota ERA bears only a superficial resemblance to the original federal ERA.
The original federal ERA sought to ensure that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
Though the federal ERA was never added as an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, most Americans recognize that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, along with laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX, offer robust safeguards against gender- or race-based discrimination.
To understand why progressives are trying to advance the ERA in 2023, then, we need to look at how the ERA has changed.
The text of the proposed ERA amendment to the Minnesota Constitution is as follows:
Equality under the law shall not be abridged or denied by this state or any of its cities, counties, or other political subdivisions on account of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, ancestry, or national origin.
“Gender identity or expression” is not defined in the bill, leaving the interpretation subjective to individuals. Under the language of this bill, if anyone can identify as a “woman,” a man could argue that he must be afforded the rights of womanhood such as access to women’s prison, women-only shelters, women’s and girls’ sports teams, and other female-only spaces and opportunities.
The “Equal Rights Amendment” thus creates whole new opportunities for activist judges to create new categories of discrimination, for example it may be seen as a violation of the ERA to “misgender” someone who identifies as transgender, or restrict girls’ sports teams and changing facilities to female athletes only.
More seriously, the ERA has been used in other states as a constitutional guarantee for taxpayer-funded abortion. In New Mexico, the state Supreme Court unanimously ruled, solely on the basis of the strict requirements of their state ERA, that since New Mexico provided funding for health care services unique to men, and only women undergo abortions, the denial of taxpayer funding for abortions is “sex discrimination.” (1998)
ERA experts expect the same type of argument to be made for taxpayer funding of “gender transition” surgeries.
This week’s vote makes it clear that many in the Minnesota Senate wish to send a message that they are pro-woman. However, the proposed Minnesota ERA would erase protections for women, not make them stronger.
We hope legislators in the Minnesota House will vote NO on the ERA when it comes up for a vote. Click below to tell your House member to vote no.
