4ERA's email on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts

I received the following email from 4era.com this morning:

Dear ERA supporters,

As many of you may know, in preparation for Judge John Roberts' Supreme Court nomination hearings, documents from his service to the Reagan administration were released. Some of these documents mention the Equal Rights Amendment and imply that Roberts' was opposed to it. The documents are getting a great deal of media attention and his past opposition to the ERA is being noted frequently. Some of you have felt compelled to write to us expressing your concerns about Roberts' view of the ERA. Regardless of one's opinion of his perceived stance on other issues, I think it is important that we, as supporters of the ERA, try to gain an understanding of the facts behind Roberts' previous statements regarding the ERA and to discover whether he indeed opposes adding a statement to our Constitution guaranteeing equal rights to men and women.

During the last two weeks, I've attempted but failed to obtain any information about the legal rationale Roberts used when advising President Reagan not to support the ERA. Therefore, I have contacted the offices of Senators Ted Kennedy and Diane Feinstein, both of whom sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee and are also sponsors of the ERA resolution. I believe they share our concern and will be posing questions to Judge Roberts which might enlighten us as to his views about the ERA. Although not obliged to, I hope that Judge Roberts will provide some answers which will help us understand whether those are his beliefs or if he was merely reflecting the position of the administration he was serving. I am optimistic that all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will do their best to ascertain Roberts' suitability as the Supreme Court Chief Justice.

The current anxiety about the vacancies on the Supreme Court serves to highlight the dilemma we face because we lack a constitutional guarantee of equality. Other than the right to vote--which is stated explicitly in the 19th amendment--all of the other "rights" that American women enjoy are based on interpretations of the Constitution. Because these interpretations are subject to alteration or reversal, our "rights" are much more vulnerable to changes in the Supreme Court.

Now more than ever we need to enlighten and engage other members of the public and to work to obtain the legislative support we need to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. An explicit statement that the Constitution applies equally to both sexes is a very basic requirement of a democracy. Indeed, the US government is insisting that Iraq's new constitution contain a statement granting equal rights to Iraqi women and men. These current events provide us with an excellent opportunity to remind our members of Congress that we still lack this fundamental right of equality and to ask them to co-sponsor ERA legislation.

Idella Moore
4ERA Executive Officer

There's a petition at their website to support ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. If you'd like to be included on their email list, you can become a member (membership is free, and they have a privacy statement).