Shortly after the 19th Amendment was ratified, first-wave feminist leaders turned their attention to the next big project: the ERA.³First proposed in 1923, the ERA is a constitutional amendment that, if formally recognized as the 28th Amendment, would make sex-based equality explicit in the U.S. Constitution for the first time.⁴ It would prohibit discrimination “on account of sex,” including discrimination against people of all genders. By giving Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the amendment’s provisions, the ERA would empower the legislative branch to strengthen legal protections against sex discrimination in areas including gender-based violence, education, the workplace, and access to reproductive health care.⁵ In the event of “legislative default,” as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, the ERA would provide courts with “an unassailable basis for applying the bedrock principle: All men and women are guaranteed by the Constitution equal justice under law.”⁶

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