For Immediate Release: January 17, 2025
Contact: Ryan Hite, Communications Director
Washington, D.C.: President Joe Biden has decided to use his final days and hours as President to run his administration completely off the rails. Today he unilaterally and falsely declared (via X post and at a public speech) that the long-expired Equal Rights Amendment had cleared all necessary hurdles and he considers it officially the 28th Amendment to the Constitution. The several major flaws with this nonsense declaration have already been brought to the surface, from legal authorities to community notes on X.
“Joe Biden is determined to spend his final days as a dictator,” said Phyllis Schlafly Eagles President Ed Martin. “Not only that, but frankly he’s showing his cowardice in throwing out blatant lies that he cannot back up legally or constitutionally, simply as red meat to energize his base just hours before President Trump takes command. The ERA expired long ago and is not nor can it be added to the Constitution. No one is falling for these desperate, cowardly declarations by a would-be dictator whose time in office is about to fade into irrelevancy.”
John Schlafly added, “Chief among the many problems for Joe Biden in this irrational claim is that his own government disagrees with him. The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and the U.S. Archivist have both declared the 1970s Equal Rights Amendment as long expired and absolutely incapable of being ratified now by simply passing it through three more states. This ridiculous ploy changes nothing about the Constitution.”
Martin added, “I would ask the radical Democrat Party if this is really the precedent they want to set on the eve of Trump’s inauguration. The President of the United States cannot change the Constitution simply by posting on X. Is that really what they want to argue for right now? I doubt it.”
The Equal Rights Amendment has been declared as expired by both the OLC at the Justice Department [further information here] and also recently by the U.S. Archivists [further information here].
