House passes ERA, domestic violence bills
WASHINGTON — With a nod to Women’s History Month, the Democraticled House passed two measures Wednesday, one designed to protect women from domestic violence, the other to remove the deadline for states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act passed 244172 with 29 Republicans joining Democrats in supporting the legislation.
The resolution to repeal the ERA’s ratification deadline passed 222204. Both measures face a more difficult path in an evenly divided Senate.
The White House announced its support earlier Wednesday for reauthorizing VAWA, which aims to reduce domestic and sexual violence and improve the response to it through a variety of grant programs. Many of the Democratic congresswomen wore allwhite outfits to commemorate the day, a nod to the women’s suffrage movement when marchers would wear white dresses to symbolized the femininity and purity of their cause.
President Biden introduced the original Violence Against Women Act in June 1990 when serving as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A subsequent version was eventually included in a sweeping crime bill that President Bill Clinton would sign into law four years later. Congress has reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act three times since.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki called VAWA “one of the president’s proudest accomplishments” and said he is urging the Senate to work in a bipartisan manner so that he can sign the reauthorization bill into law soon.
The other measure the House took up Wednesday would remove the deadline for states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, a decadeslong effort to amend the Constitution to expressly prohibit discrimination based on sex. Congress initially required the states to ratify it by 1979, a deadline it later extended to 1982.
The Justice Department under former President Donald Trump said that Congress cannot revive a proposed constitutional amendment after the deadline for its ratification has expired. Supporters would have to start over and follow Article V of the Constitution, which requires support from twothirds of each chamber of Congress and ratification from threequarters of the states before an amendment is added to the Constitution.
The fight over the Equal Rights Amendment began almost a century ago. The amendment finally passed with the requisite majority in each chamber when President Richard Nixon was serving his first term.
Shortly after Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment last year, the archivist of the United States declared he would take no action to certify the amendment’s adoption, citing the Justice Department opinion.