So technically, I have a high school diploma and several hours of college under my belt,

but I have no law degree, no undergraduate degree, none of those things,

and yet I had enough powers of persuasion to cajole and coax the state legislatures across the country

to ratify an amendment that was almost 200 years old.

And by the time that it got its 38th state, in 1992, it was actually 202 years old.

You must remember that when the Constitution was written, that women were regarded as property.

The struggle for an Equal Rights Amendment traces back to 1923 when feminist Alice Paul

wrote the words that became ERA.

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or bridged by the United States or any

state on account of sex.

So as we warns today, remember, forward together, backward, never.

If you could change one thing about the Constitution, what would it be?

I would add an equal rights amendment.

Today, the House of Representatives cleared a hurdle to make the Equal Rights Amendment, the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

The House voted to remove a deadline for states to ratify the amendment, which would guarantee women the same legal rights as men.

Hi, I'm Kate Kelly, human rights attorney, feminist, and advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment. And this is ordinary equality. We've established that the U.S. has fallen behind

when it comes to the rights protected in our Constitution. And now we're closer than ever to

changing that, at least when it comes to inserting a gender equality clause. But last we

talked about the timeline of all this, the fate of the ERA was looking pretty bleak.

So what happened?

How did we get from failure to resurrection?

Today we're talking about a man who single-handedly passed a different amendment and thereby re-energized the somewhat dormant fight for the ERA.

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