Virginia House kills Equal Rights Amendment vote for 2019 - Polidicks

https://wtop.com/virginia/2019/01/va-wont-ratify-era-this-year/ WASHINGTON — The bid to make Virginia the final state needed to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment was stopped in the House of Delegates Tuesday morning. A House subcommittee on privileges and elections voted 4-2 along party lines to recommend killing the House and Senate resolutions that would have ratified the amendment, which declares 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.” In the United States, after an amendment gets a two-thirds vote from both the U.S. House and Senate, it is sent to the states for a vote. At the state level, three-fourths of the states must approve the amendment. And out of 50 states, that means 38 must vote in favor for the amendment for it to be enacted. Right now, 37 states have done that. The Virginia House recommendation means it is almost certain the resolutions will not make it to the House floor.

State legislature has elections this year so are they trying to lose?

Are there any less treasonous states who haven't ratified yet? One more is all we need.

No, it's not a cut and dry issue really. Opponents of the ERA are afraid that it could make access to abortion a more explicit constitutional right and make it harder for states to restrict it based on arbitrary rules like requiring an ultrasound or something like that. However, voting against women's rights still looks bad so they want to silently smother it in its crib in committee rather than bringing it to a vote. There's a good chance it would fail in the house as republicans still have control but they don't wanna give democrats their soundbites for november. Compare this to the minimum wage bill which was just voted down: republicans forced a vote on it so they could get THEIR soundbites for november to tell their voters that the democrats want to increase the minimum wage to $15/hr (which, presumably, they're supposed to find absurd).

Among the states that have not ratified the ERA yet — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Virginia — all bets are on Virginia to make gender equality a constitutional right.

Impressive that Texas and Tennessee are not on that list.

Treasonous?

Like ones who haven't waged a war of secession against the federal government

Tennessee as of late is gambling a lot on tourism and needs to not look like a backwoods shithole. Texas has a sizeable lgbt population in Houston so theres that.

This isn't quite as simple as "Virginia hates rights" This amendment's a bit fucky. It's past its deadline and multiple states have attempted to withdraw their ratification (can they do that? who knows!).

Or at least ones who know said war is over, and they lost.

I would say no, because then what's to stop any state currently from withdrawing from any federal constitutional amendment already passed? May as well go back to 1850 at that point.

its probably for the better, we have enough constitutional crisis right now and I'd rather not have this SCOTUS ruling on how to change the constitution given how they are so far up their ass about constitutional literalism