Author: Ting Ting Cheng

Ting Ting Cheng is the director of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. Ting Ting was the legal director of the 2017 Women’s March on Washington and served on the National Organizing Committee. She was a foreign law clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa for Justices Albie Sachs and Edwin Cameron. In addition, Ting Ting was a Fulbright Scholar to South Africa where she received the Amy Biehl Award.

State ERAs Can Protect Reproductive Rights Post-Dobbs

Pennsylvania’s highest court held in January that the state’s statutory ban on Medicaid coverage for abortion is sex discrimination under the state’s Equal Rights Amendment—the first time a state supreme court has ruled on how state ERAs impact reproductive rights since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization dismantled the federal constitutional right to abortion.

This decision proves that reproductive rights have a future post-Dobbs—one firmly rooted in state-level ERAs and their untapped potential to protect and advance reproductive rights.

(This essay is part of “The ERA Is Essential to Democracy” Women & Democracy collection.)

The ERA: A New Foundation for Equality in the United States

In 21st century America, the battle for gender equality persists. In nearly a century after it was first proposed in Congress, the Equal Rights Amendment’s (ERA) simple guarantee that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” is still seen as a radical notion by some.

Yet despite opposition and obstacles, the ERA is closer than ever to enactment. Our 18th century Constitution—drafted without the inclusion of women, people of color native people or immigrants—is the most difficult to amend in the world. Yet, the ERA has met all of the Constitutional requirements for amendment set out in Article V.

(This essay is part of “The ERA Is Essential to Democracy” Women & Democracy collection.)