Joe Biden is leaving office trying to trigger a constitutional crisis and sow confusion as he walks out the door. Biden declared in a tweet on X that the Equal Rights Amendment was law in the U.S. Constitution. He did this with no proof, evidence, or anything changing legally. It's not a new amendment; it never met ratification requirements, and declaring otherwise shows stark disregard for the rule of law.

Originally introduced in 1923, the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced to every Congress until it was finally passed in 1972, with a two-thirds majority in the House and Senate, and sent for a ratification vote to the states. In the proposal section for this amendment, a seven-year period was given to achieve ratification. Congress extended that by a few years, giving proponents until 1982 - a decade - to get two-thirds of the states to ratify the amendment.

The amendment was close to becoming an amendment to the Constitution, but it fell short. As Congressional Research Services notes, "35 states ratified the amendment by the extended deadline (fewer than the three-fourths or 38 states required by the Constitution)."

This is a fact that no one disputes. So why is Biden declaring the amendment to be the "law of the land?" Because some Democrats decided to try the novel legal maneuver of... ignoring the law. Here's the theory:

Despite the 1982 deadline, supporters of the ERA continued to seek its ratification. In 2017, acting upon the notion that the ratification deadline could be disregarded, Nevada became the 36th state to ratify the amendment. After Illinois and Virginia, acting upon the same premise as Nevada, ratified the ERA in 2018 and 2020, respectively, the states (Illinois, Virginia, Nevada) moved the Archivist of the United States to publish and certify the amendment as part of the Constitution.

That theory has fallen apart in courts, and no one has accepted the notion that the timetable laid out in the Equal Rights Amendment is null and void. It's reasonably accepted that Congress set out a timetable, then extended that timetable, and the amendment's proponents failed to meet the deadline.

Congress has even had opportunities to remove the time requirement in the amendment and has declined to do so. Other Representatives and Senators have offered extensions and other additions, too. The simple conclusion is that any state ratifying the amendment after the deadline does not meet the ratification requirements.

There's another can of worms, too. Let's say we did get rid of the timeline requirement for the ERA. Are there enough states then?

That's unclear, too.

Five states that initially ratified the amendment turned around and rejected their own ratification. Those states areNebraska, Idaho, Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Dakota. There are two issues here: 1) can a state rescind a ratification? 2) Would that have to occur inside or outside the ratification period?

The answer is unclear. Proponents of the ERA dismiss any notions that a state can rescind ratification of an amendment. They point to the Constitution, which only has a clause pointing to states ratifying an amendment. This makes sense if all the states have agreed to an amendment. You can't then summarily rescind ratification after the whole process is done. However, if the decision to rescind happens during the overall ratification process, before everything is settled, as is the case here, it's unclear what happens.

We could only have 33 states with true ratification of the proposed amendment. And not, this only applies if the amendment didn't have a timeframe placed upon it. Congress would have to change the law and remove the timeline to have a shot at this, even if it were the case.

Finally, there's the reliance factor here. In his statement, Joe Biden bizarrely claims that the Equal Rights Amendment became law in 2020, after Virginia ratified it. If that were true, you would think that at some point in the last five years, lawyers would have used an equal rights amendment dealing with sex and gender in any of the numerous Supreme Court cases dealing with these issues.

No lawyers or courts have done so. Every court, every lawyer, and every sane person knows that the Equal Rights Amendment is not law. No one relies on it to support their case, and no plaintiff is suing under the notion that their rights under this amendment are getting violated.

It's not law, and anyone suggesting otherwise is attacking the rule of law. The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was asked about the amendment before she passed away. She told advocates to start the process over because the deadline had passed. She said this after Virginia tried to ratify the amendment, and claim the ERA was the newest amendment to the Constitution.

Ginsberg didn't buy this argument, and neither does anyone else. The Equal Rights Amendment is not the law of the land, and Joe Biden attacks the constitutional order by suggesting otherwise. Vice President Harris joined Biden on this front, as did other Democratic Senators, Representatives, and activists.

These attacks are a disgrace to the country and the Constitution. It's yet another reason Biden leaves office as a complete failure.