Hundreds of activists are at the State Capitol on this International Women’s Day, pushing for an Equal Rights Amendment in the Minnesota Constitution and also urging the process be re-started for an amendment to the U-S Constitution. Laurie Bangs from Minneapolis says they’re afraid of some “rollback” of individual rights on the federal level. She says, “I think it’s really important to be very explicit about protecting women’s rights and putting it at the same level as racial discrimination.”
During the 1970s, 35 states ratified a federal Equal Rights Amendment, but the necessary threshold of 38 states was not reached before the amendment sunseted in 1982.