Removing the Deadline for the Ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, as we celebrate Women's History Month, we do so with an awareness that so much work in the fight for equality remains. Much has been accomplished, but much remains to be done. This is one of those.

That is what the House is focusing on this week, women's equality, women's safety and justice, and women's opportunity. I am proud that we are taking action to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act within the first 3 months of the new Congress.

I was a cosponsor--and proud of it--of the original 1994 Violence Against Women Act. We passed the original VAWA on a bipartisan basis and reauthorized it with bipartisan support in 2000 and again in 2005. Those were overwhelming votes of 371-1 and 415-4.

Now we are talking about the equal rights amendment, I understand.

In 2013, we did it again on VAWA, 87 Republicans joining all 199 Democrats in the House vote. Every time we reauthorized the law, we made it stronger, ensuring protections for more women who were victimized by domestic abuse, stalking, and other crimes.

Last Congress, our House Democratic majority passed a VAWA reauthorization that included these expanded protections, but Senate Republicans blocked it from consideration. Not that they offered an alternative, not that they said: This is a problem and we need to solve it. It has been bipartisan, so here is our view and we will go to conference on it.

They simply blocked it.

It is essential, Madam Speaker, that Congress take action with a long-term reauthorization of VAWA, made all the more critical by the rise in domestic violence we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and more people having to stay home; an epidemic of domestic violence. Let's send a message to the women and men of America that Congress will continue to do its part to root out domestic violence and abuse.

I was just with Congresswoman Jackson Lee, the sponsor and the chair of the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security Subcommittee. Chairman Nadler is now speaking. I said then, as I say now: It is critical that we pass this legislation.

I agree with President Biden, the author of the original 1994 Violence Against Women Act, that strengthening and renewing VAWA is long past due. Once we pass it in the House, I hope the Senate will send it quickly to President Biden to sign it into law.

Madam Speaker, I am speaking on both VAWA, obviously, and the ERA, two very critically important pieces of legislation.

Last year, Virginia became the 38th State to ratify the equal rights amendment. When I hear the opposition to the equal rights amendment, you would think that we were organizing to defeat women's rights. I think some of these speeches were written by Lewis Carroll.

After Virginia passed and became the 38th State, the House passed a resolution to affirm that, with Virginia's action, the equal rights amendment had been duly added to our Constitution as the 28th Amendment. However, the Republican-led Senate refused to do the same.

Now, with the Democratic-led Senate, I am hopeful that Congress can affirm the adoption of that amendment and provide strong, legal backing to those seeking to have it recognized by our courts as a full part of our Constitution.

What little faith we demonstrate in the courts of the United States of America when it is going to be interpreted, according to some, as not affirming equal rights for women, but somehow undermining equal rights. That is why I say that I think these speeches were written by Lewis Carroll.

The amendment simply states, as I am sure has been said: ``Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.''

How can that be misinterpreted to say somehow we are enunciating a proposition that would undermine rather than protect and lift up the rights of women?

It is long overdue that we, as a Nation, affirm this truth: that all men and women are created equal. Not the same, quite obviously, but equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Madam Speaker, I have two granddaughters and I have three great- granddaughters. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--the famous or, as she would say from time to time, the infamous RGB--said this: ``I would like to see my granddaughters, when they pick up the Constitution, to see that notion--that women and men are persons of equal stature--I'd like them to see that it is a basic principle of our society.''

Madam Speaker, that is what this amendment is about. It should have been passed two centuries ago, but it is never too late to do the right thing. And we can take a major step forward this week to make that happen by passing the bipartisan resolution offered by Representatives Jackie Speier and Tom Reed.

I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting both H.J. Res. 17 and the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Both will articulate our concern for women, for mothers, for daughters, for sisters, for neighbors, for friends.

We have a chance this week to send a message that Congress will not tolerate violence or discrimination against women, and we have an opportunity to mark this Women's History Month, not just with words, but with actions that mean something by making history in a very positive way, benefiting not only women, but our Nation as a whole.

Madam Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support these two very important pieces of legislation.

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