Does Biden's Equal Rights Announcement Have Any Teeth?

In January 2025, just before leaving office, President Joe Biden declared the Equal Rights Amendment the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Eh...Can he do that?

Yeah, he can say that. But it doesn't mean that we have a 28th amendment now. In order for a proposed amendment to become. part of the Constitution, it first needs to pass 2/3s vote of Congress, and then be ratified by3/4 of the states. There's a deadline after Congress' vote by which the states need to ratify it. In 1972, 2/3 of Congress voted to add the ERA to the Constitution, but the 38th state did not ratify it until 2020, much too late to count.

As far as Biden announcing that the ERA is the 28th amendment, that really has nothing to do with making it a part of the Constitution and, in my opinion, Biden just wanted to seem like a women's ally on his way out the door. I find that very annoying. We don't need someone waiving a white flag with a slogan on it on the way out. What we needed was someone campaigning for the ERA WHILE THEY WERE IN OFFICE.

Now we don't have an ERA, we don't have national abortion rights, we don't have a balanced Supreme Court*, we don't have trans rights, we don't have a woman president, and we have Trump. Nice job, Joe.

*I know SCOTUS is not Biden's fault, but it fit in the rant.