For American women who believe the ERA will rescue sex based rights from evisceration by gender ideology: it won’t. 1) b/c we now see that sex must be defined to avoid having gender ID make sex subjective. 2) w/o express exemptions for women’s spaces strict equality will prevail.
Bending to genderism, SCOTUS last year held that “transgender status” is protected under a law that only refers to *sex* discrimination, on logic that identifying as opposite sex inherently involves one’s sex. So “sex” protection now automatically includes subjective identity.
That legal rule poses few problems for women/LGB in areas where men & women should be treated the same anyway (eg, don’t fire employee based on sex or trans status - whatever the latter even means). It poses huge problems in areas where women need separate treatment from men.
Those who hope the ERA would strengthen women’s rights: w/o defining sex/women, who will claim “sex based rights”? Men. Men will claim sex discrim by directly claiming they are women (& there’s no legal definition to contradict that) or by logic that sex-identity=sex discrim.
ERA also enshrines strict equality as the default. This means any separations based on sex must pass “strict scrutiny” (legal test requiring a compelling purpose & narrowly tailored means to further the purpose). Higher bar even than UK Eq Act (legitimate aim).
How many women-only spaces/services will pass that test? Locker rooms? Rape shelters? Prisons? Sports? Census sex questions? Not a chance, in the current climate of how horribly discriminatory it is to hurt the feelings & deny dignity of trans-identified people to divide by sex.
The answer isn’t another law that says “Must Treat Equally Based On Sex.” The only helpful law is one that defines sex, then defines women-only spaces as not discriminatory to men generally or to men with gender identities. Otherwise ERA is another tool for men to co-opt women.
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