SB 233, an extreme bill restricting medical freedom and targeting trans youth, passed both Kansas chambers last month. Learn how you can protect medical freedom and the rights of trans youth by stopping it.
We’ve settled the issue of gravity. We know that the earth is not flat. We know the cosmos is infinite.
But this society still struggles with equality, especially, gender equality.
In 2011, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said, “Certainly, the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that is what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey, we have things called legislatures and they enact things called laws.”
Again, that was 2011.
Is it any wonder that today, there were numerous bills in the legislature this session aimed at stifling voting rights or that the nation was unable to pass The Equal Rights Amendment or ERA?
This follows a historical trend in the nation and more recently here in Kansas, to make voting more difficult for certain groups of people including women, whether it’s restricting mail-in ballots, creating delivery restrictions on advance ballots, or treating them as provisional ballots.
Much of the impact hits its intended targets, but sometimes, there are unintended consequences where voter suppression efforts like documentary proof of citizenship and CrossCheck, where people were caught up in nets not intended for them.
We’ve also seen measures fail recently related to banning remote drop boxes immediately and electronic voting machines eventually, along with an effort to eliminate the three-day grace period on mail-in ballots.
The ERA is a proposed amendment to the Constitution that would explicitly prohibit sex discrimination. Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman introduced it in Congress in 1923.
Adherents said it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. Opponents worried it might be used to protect reproductive rights and more recently, to protect transgender rights.
When the 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868, the Equal Protection Clause, which guarantees equal protection under the law, did not apply to women. It was not until 1971 that the Supreme Court extended equal protection to sex-based discrimination.
Women, however, have never been entitled to full equal protection as the Court subsequently ruled that statutory or administrative sex classifications were subject to an intermediate standard of judicial review, a less stringent standard than that applied to other forms of discrimination.
ERA finally passed in 1972, following a nationwide strike by women. The bill received a seven-year deadline to be ratified by 38 states. Kansas was one of the 22 states to pass it in the first year.
But it never reached the 38-state threshold.
It has been introduced to Congress every year since 1982 and even though it failed nationally, many states have incorporated some form of it in their respective constitutions.
The fact that equality remains controversial and contentious speaks to the need to fight harder than ever to protect voting rights. The only thing we know for certain is that attacks on voting will continue in Kansas and beyond.
Under the Kansas Constitution, women had limited voting rights. Women could vote in school elections.
But full suffrage for women here in Kansas took focused work from real visionaries.
We could use the leadership of Clarina Nichols, Susanna Madora Salter and Lucy B. Johnston even today, as extremists in the legislature continue their attacks on voting rights for everyone.
Nichols made her name as a journalist in the Quindaro settlement but was also an abolitionist and a suffragist. She was present at the Wyandotte Constitutional Convention of 1859 where she advocated for women’s property rights, equal guardianship of children, and “the right to vote on all school questions.”
Slater actually served as a mayor 25 years before women had state-level voting rights. She was mistakenly voted into office in Argonia in 1887, after men placed her name on the Prohibition Party ticket, “as a joke.”
Johnston served as president of the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association and the Kansas Federation of Women’s Clubs. She played a key role in the 1912 amendment that gave Kansas women the right to vote.
This is a short list. Many other Kansas women strategized and fought for the right to vote.
Sadly, this work must continue in the face of perpetual and persistent attacks on voting rights.
At the moment, there are seven bills pending in the Kansas legislature aimed at limiting early, in-person voting, placing additional restrictions on mail-in ballots, ending the three-day grace period for mail-in ballots and much more.
In their memory and for our future, we have to keep fighting.
Learn more about the women’s Suffrage Movement in Kansas at: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Kansas | Blog | Museum of World Treasures
