Tell Your Representative: Minnesotans Don't Need the ERA

After passing through several committees in the Minnesota House, HF 726, the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment” (ERA) was voted to the General Register. Now that the bill is on the General Register, HF 726 can be taken up at any time for final passage in the House.

HF 726 claims to provide for “gender equality” under the law. Gender is not given a definition in the text of the bill, leaving interpretation to individuals who can change so-called “gender identity” at will.

I’d like you to consider an example of how this bill would impact our culture: If a male athlete does not make his university’s swim team, he may choose to try out for the women’s team and displace one female athlete because he has faster lap times. This displacement of the female athlete would be protected by law. After all, the ERA deems a male athlete joining the women’s team as equal opportunity in action. Any effort of appeal on this matter by the displaced female athlete would be deemed “discrimination” by the ERA.

In addition to violating women’s rights, the ERA would strengthen access to abortion. With the ERA in place, any restriction on abortion in Minnesota would be illegal and considered discrimination against women. This isn’t guesswork – it has happened in other states that have ratified the ERA.

Please use this action alert to tell your Representative to tell them how the ERA harms women and the unborn:

• The Minnesota Legislature should protect women’s rights, not subvert women’s rights in favor of men.
• The ERA provides opportunity for aggression of men in women-only spaces such as domestic abuse shelters, prisons, locker rooms, bathrooms, and sports teams.
• If sports cannot be separated by sex, women will experience systemic discrimination.
• If HF 726 is ratified, protections for women under current law will cease to exist.
• The ERA would open the door to unfettered access to abortion. Minnesotans want to protect the unborn, not legalize the genocide of them.

Email your Representative now and tell him or her to vote NO on HF 726.

Here's the message you'll send to your Representative. There are other reasons to oppose the ERA, which you can read HERE.

Dear Representative,

Thank you for your service in the Minnesota legislature. I am writing to register my opposition as a Minnesotan to the so-called Equal Rights Amendment which the Minnesota House may soon take up in a floor vote.

Minnesotans supports equality before the law for all Americans, but that’s not what the Equal Rights Amendment actually does. Men and women already have equal protections under the 5th and 14th Amendments, and numerous Minnesota laws already prohibit sex discrimination in employment, education, housing, and many other areas.

The Supreme Court has ruled, “Neither federal nor state government acts compatibly with the equal protection principle when a law or official denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature-equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.” It is very clear that state laws cannot discriminate against women or men. This language has been tested in court and upheld countless times as the ultimate legal protection for all persons residing in Minnesota.

Instead of protecting the rights of women, this iteration of the ERA attempts to prohibit discrimination “on account of gender,” while refusing to define “gender.” If, like the original ERA of the 1970s, the revived bill used the word “sex,” few would claim that the ERA was necessary in 2022 because of federal and state laws which already guarantee equal protection for women. The efforts to revive the ERA aren’t about women’s rights; they’re about trading a common sense definition of sex in state and federal law for an unverifiable "gender identity," preventing the government from protecting women’s privacy rights in public accommodations like domestic violence shelters and school locker rooms, eroding designated female sports teams fought for under Title IX, mandating taxpayer funding for abortions, requiring coverage of sex change surgeries, and threatening the status of churches and religious organizations.

Women deserve better than the ERA - they deserve the equal protections already granted to them by the Constitution, as well as legal protections based on sex, which include pro-woman legislation that would strengthen privacy protections, increase penalties for human trafficking, and ban sex-selective abortions.

Thank you for your consideration and for your service in our Legislature.