Option 1:
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the Fourteenth Amendment both aim to address issues of equality, but they focus on separate concepts. The ERA, first proposed in 1923, is explicitly targeted at gender-based discrimination, seeking to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex “The Equal Rights Amendment would put protection for women and other marginalized genders directly into the United States Constitution.” (MacKinnon & Crenshaw, 2019). In contrast, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, is a broader constitutional provision that encompasses various civil rights issues, including the Equal Protection Clause, which ensures equal protection under the law without specifying gender “The U.S. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled for decades that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects women from unequal treatment under the law.” (Herrod et al., 2021). While both amendments share the goal of promoting equality, the ERA is specifically concerned with gender equality, whereas the Fourteenth Amendment has a broader scope, addressing a range of civil rights issues such as race, gender, and other forms of discrimination.
References:
Do We Still Need the Equal Rights Amendment in 2022? (2022, March 24). BillTrack50. Retrieved October 14, 2023, from
https://www.billtrack50.com/blog/dividedwefall_era/
Herrod, C., Fischer, S., & Forde, K. (2021, July 5).
Do We Need the Equal Rights Amendment Today? — Divided We Fall. Divided We Fall. Retrieved October 14, 2023, from
https://dividedwefall.org/equality-amendment/
MacKinnon, C. A., & Crenshaw, K. W. (2019, December 26).
Forum: Reconstituting the Future: An Equality Amendment. The Yale Law Journal. Retrieved October 14, 2023, from
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/reconstituting-the-future-the-equality-amendment