A Hollow Gesture: The Farce of Recognizing the ERA in 2025

Alt Text: Diverse women leading a press event on the Equal Rights Amendment, symbolizing gender equality and constitutional progress.
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There is something faintly comic, if not outright contemptible, about President Joe Biden’s announcement today recognizing the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) as part of the United States Constitution. The sheer absurdity of the moment stems not from the stated goal of gender equality—an ideal to which every civilized person should subscribe—but from the rotting edifice of political theater upon which this pronouncement rests. Here we have a president, late into his octogenarian somnolence, championing a piece of legislation that has been legally inert, politically obsolete, and socially redundant for decades. Biden’s gesture is emblematic of a broader tendency in our age: performative politics masquerading as principled leadership.

The ERA, for those blessedly uninitiated in its tortured history, was first introduced in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972, only to falter on the shoals of state ratification. The deadline to enshrine it in the Constitution expired in 1982, though a handful of states have since made belated ratifications as if engaged in a cargo cult ritual, hoping their symbolic gestures might summon forth the law’s legitimacy. Today, Biden has chosen to breathe artificial life into this legislative fossil, claiming it as a victory for justice. But in doing so, he insults the intelligence of the American public, trivializes the fight for gender equality, and undermines the integrity of constitutional law.

Let us begin with the legal farce. The Constitution, for all its virtues, is not a wax-nosed document that can be molded to the whims of modern sentimentality. Its amendment process is deliberately arduous, requiring not only congressional approval but also the ratification of three-fourths of the states within a reasonable timeframe. The ERA failed this test. To now proclaim its validity through a presidential fiat or some tortured legal reasoning reeks of opportunism and contempt for the rule of law. Biden’s move has already drawn criticism from legal scholars across the spectrum, many of whom rightly point out that such a recognition defies constitutional norms. What is the point of a ratification deadline if it can be ignored at will? What precedent does this set for future amendments? The answer, of course, is that it sets a precedent for chaos.

Moreover, the ERA, even in its heyday, was a solution in search of a problem. Its core provisions—guaranteeing equality under the law regardless of sex—are already enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as a host of federal and state laws. Women have made extraordinary strides in virtually every domain, from education to the workforce to political leadership, without the ERA. To suggest that the failure to ratify this amendment has somehow left American women in chains is to engage in historical illiteracy of the highest order. Gender equality, while far from perfect, has advanced through the hard work of activists, litigators, and lawmakers—not through the fetishization of a single legislative relic.

But it is the political and moral cowardice underlying Biden’s decision that most demands our scrutiny. Here is a president who, faced with a nation grappling with economic insecurity, a fraying social fabric, and an increasingly assertive global adversary in China, has chosen to expend his dwindling political capital on an empty gesture. Recognizing the ERA today is not a courageous stand for justice; it is a cynical ploy to placate a segment of the electorate that thrives on symbolic victories over substantive change. It allows the administration to bask in the warm glow of progressivism without making any progress because, well, what progress remains?

Indeed, the timing of this announcement is revealing. Biden, whose poll numbers have sagged under the weight of inflation, immigration crises, and a general air of incompetence, appears desperate to rebrand himself as a champion of equality in his final days. But one cannot help but notice that his recognition of the ERA comes not as a response to any grassroots demand or urgent necessity, but as a calculated maneuver to divert attention from his administration’s failures and his chief adversary’s election. It is the political equivalent of erecting a statue in one’s own honor while the city burns.

And what of the broader cultural implications? By reviving the ERA, Biden has handed a gift to reactionary forces who thrive on liberal overreach. The spectacle of a Democratic president unilaterally recognizing a long-expired amendment will undoubtedly energize conservative pundits and politicians who decry the left’s disregard for tradition and constitutional propriety. It will provide ammunition to those who argue—often with hyperbolic fervor—that progressive politics is driven by symbolism at the expense of substance. In this sense, Biden’s decision does not advance the cause of gender equality; it undermines it by fueling the culture wars that have poisoned American discourse.

The true irony of this moment lies in its utter futility. Even if Biden’s recognition of the ERA were to withstand legal challenges—and that’s if it’s even challenged, since nobody seems to take this seriously—it would do little to alter the lived reality of American women, who have already achieved through other means that which the ERA was meant to enshrine.

In the end, Biden’s recognition of the ERA is a perfect encapsulation of his presidency: genial but toothless, symbolic but ineffectual, nostalgic but out of step with the realities of the present. It is a reminder that the road to irrelevance is paved with empty gestures, and that true leadership requires more than the recycling of dead letters from the past.

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