On Friday, President Joe Biden made an announcement declaring the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, which specifically prohibits any form of discrimination based on sex.

In a statement, Biden emphasized the importance of acknowledging the will of the American people, stating that it is overdue. He expressed his commitment to upholding the Constitution and serving the country by affirming his belief in the 28th Amendment, which has been ratified by three-fourths of the states. This amendment now stands as a law ensuring that all Americans are entitled to equal rights and protections under the law, regardless of their gender.

It was a last-minute move to finally get the 102-year-old ERA onto the Constitution, with just three days of his presidency left.

A senior administration official elaborated that President Biden is leveraging his authority to assert that he not only supports but also agrees with prominent Constitutional experts and the American Bar Association. Their collective view is not just that the Equal Rights Amendment should exist, but that it is, in fact, the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

Biden’s announcement, however, appears purely symbolic, as the Archivist of the United States would have to green-light printing the ERA onto the Constitution, and she’s already said that she can’t legally do that. 

While appointed by Biden, U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan is a friend of incoming first lady Melania Trump. 

In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA – but the state did so decades after Congress set a ratification deadline of 1979. 

In December, Shogan and Deputy Archivist William Bosanko released a statement saying that Congress’ deadline remained enforceable. 

President Joe Biden announced Friday that he believed that the Equal Rights Amendment was the law of the land. It prevents sex discrimination. The move appeared to be symbolic as the U.S. Archivist would need to print the Amendment on the Constitution 

Archivist of the U.S. Colleen Shogan (right) is a friend of incoming first lady Melania Trmp (second from left). She said in a statement in December that she can’t print the Equal Rights Amendment onto the Constition with Congressional or court action to remove the deadline 

‘Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment,’ the release stated. 

Contacted on Friday, the Archives’ press staff pointed back to the December statement.

‘This is a long standing position for the Archivist and the National Archives. The underlying legal and procedural issues have not changed,’ the press office said. 

A number of Constitutional scholars point out, however, that there’s nothing about deadlines when the ratification process is spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. 

On a call with reporters Friday morning, a senior White House official said that the ‘president is not going to direct the archivist’ to make this move. 

‘The Constitution, as you just noted, makes entirely clear that amending the Constitution requires two thirds of both houses of congress and three-quarters of the states,’ the official continued. ‘And as the president has said, and as the ABA and leading scholars agree, those hurdles have been met.’ 

In the December statement, Shogan and Bosanko pointed to statements made by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2020 and again in 2022 that said the Congressional deadline was valid and enforceable and concluded that extending or removing the deadline would require new action by Congress or the courts. 

With Trump in charge and Republicans making up the majority of Congress it’s unlikely to happen under their watch. 

In 2020, the Trump administration asked a federal court to throw out a lawsuit from three attorneys general seeking to add the ERA to the Constitution after Virginia ratified the Amendment in January. 

Attorney generals in Virginia, Illinois and Nevada sued then U.S. Archivist David Ferriero to force him to ‘carry out his statutory duty of recognizing the complete and final adoption’ of the ERA as the 28th Amendment.