7 U. MD. L. J. RACE, RELIGION, GENDER & CLASS 341 (2007)
The proceedings of the last House Judiciary Committee debate on the Equal Rights Amendment (“ERA”) in 1983 was never officially published and is available only in the form of a rough transcript compiled by congressional stenographers. This article uses that transcript to explore several of the amendments offered to the ERA during the 1983 House Judiciary Committee markup and examines the concerns that motivated the sponsors of those amendments, concerns that included the ERA’s effect on government-funded abortions, the military draft and combat policies, same-sex marriage, insurance premiums, and private entities. The article then explores whether those concerns were justified in light of state court decisions interpreting the identical base text of the ERA in the six states that adopted such a state-level ERA as part of their own state constitutions.
