Councilmember McAustin: Pass ERA to Honor Justice Ginsburg

Pasadena City Council Member Margaret McAustin on Monday called for the United States to pass the long-stalled federal Equal Rights Amendment as a way of paying “the ultimate honor” to late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg over the weekend is a particularly stinging loss for women as we celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage this year,’’ McAustin, the council member from District 2, said in prepared remarks at the start of Monday’s City Council meeting.

Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights both during her days on the high court and as an attorney before she became a justice in 1993, died on Friday at age 87.

“While full equality is not yet ours, the work of Justice Ginsburg advanced the equality of the sexes in ways that are now known to women and girls everywhere,’’ McAustin said. “As the director of the Women’s Right Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, Justice Ginsburg argued six landmark cases on gender equality before the U.S. Supreme Court, winning five.

“As a Supreme Court justice, she became an exemplar and an icon, inspiring millions of women and girls to assert themselves and settle for nothing less than full equality.’’

McAustin – the only woman on the City Council — went on to say, “Passing the Equal Rights Amendment would be the ultimate honor for Justice Ginsburg.”

The ERA – a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee equal rights for all Americans regardless of sex — was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in 1971 and the U.S. Senate in 1972. Following that, 38 state Legislatures needed to ratify the amendment by March 22, 1979 for it to become law, but only 35 did so by the deadline. The deadline was eventually extended to 1982, but no further ratifications occurred.

In subsequent years, five state Legislatures voted to rescind their ratifications, though it remains an open legal question as to whether those rescindments are valid. In recent years, three state Legislatures ratified the ERA, but well past the extended deadline. Whether those three ratifications are valid — bringing the number of states to ratify to the needed 38 – remains another open legal debate.

What is not debatable is that ERA is not the law of the land. McAustin said it should be, in honor of Ginsburg.

“Many beautiful and heartfelt words have already been written in honor of Justice Ginsburg,’’ McAustin said, “and rather than compete with them, I will close using the justice’s own words:

“ ‘People ask me sometimes, when will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is, when there are nine. People are shocked, but there have been nine men and nobody’s ever raised a question about that.’ ’’

McAustin asked Mayor Terry Tornek to adjourn Monday’s meeting “with special recognition to the memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,’’ and the council did just that, in addition to its usual practice of adjourning in memory of people who have died from COVID-19.

“It’s a loss felt by all of us, I’m sure,” Tornek said of Ginsburg.