Carter Could Not Revive ERA
January 13, 2024 | Alton, IL
by Anne Schlafly, Chairman, Eagle Forum
Last week’s eulogies for Jimmy Carter included honoring some of the mistakes he made as president, such as Carter’s giveaway of the Panama Canal. Walter Mondale’s son read his father’s tribute to Carter, which included this whopper: “He proposed and signed the law extending the period for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, which now, finally, has been ratified by three quarters of the states.”
There are so many errors in that sentence. The U.S. president has no role in ratifying amendments to the Constitution, yet Carter and his wife inserted themselves into the process and lobbied for passage. According to Article V, an amendment requires the vote of two-thirds of Congress and three-quarters of the states for ratification. Carter’s “time extension” tried to undo that process in 1978 by having Congress pass a resolution to extend the deadline. Already 24 of the states that had passed ERA did so with the proviso that the seven-year time limit was valid, so their ratifications would actually expire at the end of seven years if the amendment did not reach the ratification threshold. ERA proponents ignore that the ratification process is crucial to the legitimacy of adding the amendment to the Constitution.
Also, Congress only passed the “time extension” with a simple majority, not the two-thirds as required in the Constitution. So President Carter signed the bill, pretending that he had the power to sign an amendment into the Constitution. The president has no role in the ratification of amendments and his signature was proof of his ineptitude. Even at the time, most constitutional scholars thought the “time extension” would not hold up in court. As it happened, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that ERA was legally dead in 1982 in the case, National Organization for Women v. Idaho.
Furthermore, Carter’s “time extension” was only for a little more than three years. Mondale tries to claim that ERA has now been ratified. The three recent state ratifications have been ruled illegal and out of bounds by a 2021 court decision, Virginia v. Ferriero.
Carter’s support of ERA was rejected by the American people and one of the many reasons that he lost re-election in 1980.
It is wonderful to honor and praise the departed, but these occasions should not be used as an attempt to rewrite history.
Anne Schlafly is Chairman of Eagle Forum and has served on the Eagle Forum board of directors since 2008. She is the daughter of Eagle Forum’s founder, Phyllis Schlafly.