The so-called Equal Rights Amendment being put before New York State’s voters this November is a blatant example of how a progressive-controlled legislature can connive to impose unpopular policies upon citizens without their explicit consent or informed knowledge.  The ruse the Legislature contrived is an ambiguously worded proposal to amend the state’s constitution under the pretext of memorializing abortion rights and equal treatment of LGBT individuals.  In fact, it’s a vehicle to expand constitutional rights to gender identity, illegal migrants, and minor children.

If Prop 1 is intended to be a permanent bulwark protecting abortion, women and LGBT individuals, why aren’t they mentioned in the proposed amendment? Prop 1 is a classic example of politicians using underhanded means and misleading rhetoric to breach what is politically acceptable to the mainstream of the voting public.

There is much vocal disagreement over the what the language of Prop 1 really means.  Proponents of Prop 1 went to state’s Supreme Court over the summer to try to clarify the language of Prop 1 to include the words “abortion” and “LGBT” and in the process initiated a revealing discussion among the presiding judge, abortion advocates, the bipartisan Board of Elections, state Republicans, and the state’s Democrat attorney general over the Legislature’s intent and proposed amendment’s legal implications.

Opponents of Prop 1 argue that it would permanently enshrine in the state constitution a laundry list of progressive policies that have zero change of passing through normal legislative order and public scrutiny.  These include, but aren’t limited to, the usurpation of parental control over minor children, opening the door to favored legal status and benefits for the estimated 835,000 illegal aliens now in New York, and allowing males who want to be female to compete in girls’ sports and use their locker rooms.

Proponents of Prop 1, which include the League of Women Voters and the New York Civil Liberties Union, claim that opposition to Prop 1 is based on “disinformation.”

However, legal scholars, like Legal Insurrection’s William Jacobson, and the New York State Supreme Court judge have pointed out, the ramifications of the law are potentially broad and go well beyond voters’ reasonable interpretation of the amendment’s intent.  Even the progressives aren’t exactly sure how to interpret the language of Prop 1.  In City & State, Democrat Liz Krueger, the amendment’s sponsor in the state Senate, admitted that it was written in legalese, not plain language, and should have included the words “abortion” and “LGBT.”

Exactly.  The confusion over the implications of Prop 1 begins with its intentionally ambiguous language.  It creates new special categories of protected individuals, beyond the traditional legal categories of race, color, creed, religion, and sex.  It adds new constitutional protections for age, sexual orientation, gender identity, pregnancy outcomes, national origin, and autonomy.  In fact, Prop 1 would add nothing to the state’s existing statutory right to abortion of demand, a right that was enacted more than a half a century ago in 1970 and augmented in 2019.

The real nexus of the problem with Prop 1 is the second paragraph, which critics argue legitimizes discrimination against whites:

Nothing in this section shall invalidate or prevent the adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice that is designed to prevent or dismantle [my emphasis] discrimination on the basis of a characteristic listed in this section, nor shall any characteristic listed in this section be interpreted to interfere with, limit, or deny the civil rights or any person based on any other characteristic identified in this section.

The state’s bipartisan Board of Elections, which is required by law to write ballot language at an eighth-grade level and to state the practical outcome of any ballot measure, agreed on language mentioning gender identity, reproductive health care and autonomy.  Their explanation of the practical outcome stated: “The amendment allows laws to prevent or undo past discrimination.”  This appears to acknowledge the possibility of discrimination against whites, as practiced by diversity, inclusion, and equity policies infecting public and corporate life.

In revising the ballot language, voters will see, the judge struck the explanation regarding past discrimination and refused to include abortion rights.  In doing so, he admitted that the nature of the categories of protected individuals would “invite a much broader impact.”

In his decision, the judge also stated the obvious: the fight is “about how the practical impacts of a broadly worded amendment are to be explained to the public, while the precise contours of what those impacts will be are unclear, and will need to be fleshed out by the courts.”

As a result, Prop 1, with its ambiguous and contentious language, will be on the ballot, not to advance the actual civil rights of citizens or protect women, but to provide an open invitation to Albany’s feckless legislators and unelected bureaucrats to impose laws and regulations that didn’t go through the normal political process of gaining public support.  Grievance groups will court newly protected special interest groups to recoup alleged damages.

Sadly, what most voters will see on the ballot is simplistic and misleading:

This proposal would protect against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy. It also protects against unequal treatment based on reproductive healthcare and autonomy.

If Albany’s legislators had wanted to protect women’s health care, abortion, and LGBT individuals, they should have written a clean bill.  They didn’t, and the voting public should assume that the intentions of Albany’s legislators are malign.  Assigning bad intentions is no stretch; Albany’s progressives imposed cashless bail, raising the age for adult prosecution of alleged criminals, and congestion pricing.

The far-reaching implications of Prop 1 shouldn’t be up to New York’s judges to adjudicate from the inevitable lawsuits, or for the unelected state Board of Regents to impose on schools.  For these reasons, Prop 1 should be resoundingly rejected.

Linda R. Killian is a retired financial analyst and a local Republican chairman.

Image via Picryl.