New York Families Opposes Proposal One, The Equal Rights Amendment

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On November 5, 2024, New York voters have important decisions to make. In addition to electing candidates to various offices, New Yorkers will decide whether to approve the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (also known as Proposal One), a proposed amendment to the New York State Constitution. This article will explain the reasons that New York Families Foundation (NYFF) staunchly opposes the Equal Rights Amendment.

The ERA, which passed the State Senate and the State Assembly on July 1, 2022 and was given second passage by both houses on January 24, 2023, would add new protected characteristics to the New York State Constitution.[1] Currently, the State Constitution provides that “no person shall…be subjected to any discrimination” based on race, color, creed, or religion. The ERA would add ethnicity, national origin, age, and disability as protected antidiscrimination characteristics, along with “sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” Significantly, the ERA is not self-executing; this means that the ERA cannot be enforced unless an enabling law is passed or unless a court decision strikes down an existing law based on the ERA’s provisions.

There are several good reasons to oppose the ERA. First, the ERA includes some characteristics that do not merit constitutional protection. At their best, equal protection clauses in laws and constitutions protect people from being subjected to unjust treatment that is based on characteristics beyond their control (e.g. ethnicity, national origin, and disability) or on their religious beliefs. Such protections are welcome, and are wholly consistent with Biblical principles of fairness (see Leviticus 19:15; Proverbs 11:1) and with the American ideal of equality before the law. However, the ERA proposes to confer constitutional protection upon changeable feelings like “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” and personal choices like “reproductive healthcare and autonomy” (abortion) and “gender expression” (tranvestism). To put it simply, feelings do not merit constitutional protection; neither do bad choices.

The second reason to oppose the ERA is that it is vague and unclear. The ERA does not include definitions for any of the terms that it uses. As Cam Macdonald, Executive Director and General Counsel for the Government Justice Center, explains in his thorough legal analysis, the ERA fails to lay out what level of judicial scrutiny is applicable to the various protected characteristics contained within it and provides no guidance to courts on how to handle situations where those protected characteristics conflict with each other. As a result, Macdonald argues that the ERA could force New York courts to become “decision-makers on value judgments that determine civil rights policies in New York.” Do Christian New Yorkers want the activist New York Court of Appeals to take on this role? We think not.

The third and most important reason to oppose the ERA is that it could form the legal basis for efforts to use New York courts to push harmful leftist agendas. According to Cam Macdonald, the ERA “does not add any new rights or protect any existing rights in the state Constitution…[and does not] by itself extinguish any existing rights like parental consent.” However, the ERA could be used as a basis for court challenges to existing laws. Macdonald asserts that the ERA’s vague definition of “sex” makes it “impossible to know what [the ERA] means for same sex schools that may want to limit their attendance to biological sex.” This vagueness could invite a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of single-sex schools. Regarding religious organizations, Macdonald states that “whether the state Constitution’s protection for free exercise of religion outweighs accommodating a person’s gender belief or…[abortion decision] is an open question.” NYFF believes that this “open question” could lead to pressure on faith-based hospitals to perform medical procedures that violate their own beliefs. According to Macdonald, if the ERA were passed, New York’s Reproductive Health Act (RHA)—which allows abortions after 24 weeks’ gestation in cases where an unborn baby is not viable or an abortion is needed to protect a pregnant mother’s life or health—might possibly be held unconstitutional on the grounds that the RHA’s 24-week limit violates the ERA’s ban on “reproductive autonomy” discrimination. In other words, approving the ERA could invite a court challenge that—if successful—would leave New York without any limits whatsoever on late-term abortion. Finally, Macdonald adds that the ERA’s ban on age discrimination would create “a complicating factor for courts deciding legal questions around parental rights versus rights minors may want to assert or the government may want to grant.” Such purported “rights” for minors might include anything from a “right” to body piercing to a “right” to undergo so-called sex reassignment surgery or other medical procedures. The very real potential for the ERA to be used as a stepping stone toward radical and dangerous goals is reason enough to vote against it.

Because the ERA could endanger unborn children, families, and religious liberty, New York Families Foundation staunchly opposes it. A “no” vote on Proposal One is a vote against the pro-abortion, pro-“transgender” radicalization of the New York State Constitution. For more information on the ERA, please click here.

[1]                The proposed Equal Rights Amendment would amend Article I, Section 11 of the New York State Constitution to read as follows (the highlighted language would be added to the Constitution and the language in brackets would be removed):

                  § 11. a. No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws of this state or any subdivision thereof. No person shall, because of race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, creed [or], religion, or sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy, be subjected to any discrimination in [his or her] their civil rights by any other person or by any firm, corporation, or institution, or by the state or any agency or subdivision of the state, pursuant to law.

b. Nothing in this section shall invalidate or prevent the adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice that is designed to prevent or dismantle discrimination on the basis of a characteristic listed in this section, nor shall any characteristic listed in this section be interpreted to interfere with, limit, or deny the civil rights of any person based upon any other characteristic identified in this section.

The post New York Families Opposes Proposal One, The Equal Rights Amendment appeared first on New York Families Foundation.

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