In Fight for Women's Rights, Ohio House Democrats Urge President Biden to Certify Equal Rights Amendment

COLUMBUS - The Ohio House Democratic Caucus today joined 46 U.S. Senators, 122 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, its colleagues in the Ohio Senate and countless more across the country urging President Joe Biden to provide official notice to the Archivist of the United States to certify and publish the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

"As Ohioans and all Americans face unprecedented threats to gender justice from the incoming administration and against the backdrop of entrenched inequities, we urge you to take action to cement into the Constitution protections against discrimination on the basis of sex," read the letter to the president signed by members of the Ohio House Democratic Caucus. "In 2023, Ohio passed a constitutional amendment, The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety, only to have those rights aggressively challenged in state and local courts by the Ohio Attorney General who cites the lack of a basis in both the Ohio and the U.S. Constitutions for many aspects of our reproductive rights, because the Ohio and U.S. Constitutions do not have an Equal Rights Amendment or original provision guaranteeing women and other marginalized citizens in the Ohio Constitution. The need for a constitutional safeguard, that elevates and normalizes equality of the sexes, could not be greater at this moment."

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, discrimination remains a likely leading cause of the gender wage gap. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in Ohio, women's earnings have ranged from a low of 71.0 percent of the earnings made by their male counterparts in 1999 to a high of 83.6 percent of the earnings made by their male counterparts in 2011.