OPINION: No constitutional equality proves we need the ERA
When this country was founded, women had no rights. As late as 2010, then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in an interview that women still don’t. It wasn’t until 1971 that the court ruled women were covered under the 14th Amendment. A plethora of cases followed along two tracks: 14th Amendment equal protection and due process and Fifth Amendment due process as applied to the federal government.
In the five cases under the Fifth Amendment due process clause from 1973 to 1979, all against federal government programs, the plaintiffs (males in three cases) prevailed in four. This track record continued in 2017’s Sessions vs. Morales-Santana.
The male plaintiff argued that equal protection was violated when his citizenship was denied based on his unmarried mother, who was not a citizen, rather than his father, who was but had left the U.S. five days before his 19th birthday, the requirement to settle citizenship for a man who had a child born out of the U.S. For an unwed woman who had a child born out of the U.S., the requirement was having lived in the U.S. one year at any time in her life.