Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan, Jan. 20
Is there a need for the ERA in 2020?
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution - referring to the 1972 proposed constitutional amendment that would mandate that “(e)quality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” - is back on the national radar, even if it may only be in a symbolic sense.
Last week, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the amendment. After Democrats took control of the commonwealth’s Legislature last November (electing a record number of women in the process), the long-sought ratification appeared within reach.
By law, amendments are added to the U.S. Constitution only after three-fourths of the states approve their passage. Virginia’s approval put the ERA past threshold.
However, proposed constitutional amendments are not on the table for perpetuity. The ERA’s window for passage was originally set to close in 1979, but that was extended to 1982. Even so, the amendment fell three states short of passage at that time.
Efforts have been ramped up in recent years to get three more state on board, and it finally worked. Nevada approved the ERA in 2017, followed by Illinois in 2018 and, now, Virginia.
However, five states - including South Dakota and Nebraska - have rescinded their earlier ratifications, and now South Dakota has joined Alabama and Louisiana in filing suit to halt further efforts at ratifying the 1972 amendment.
Whether the ERA can still be adopted is a matter for the courts to untangle, Frankly, because the amendment missed its extended window of opportunity for passage, one wouldn’t be surprised to see it dismissed.
But the symbolism of it getting this far may ignite a fresh effort to add this amendment to the Constitution.
Certainly, a lot HAS changed since the ERA was passed by Congress 38 years ago. One of the big arguments against the amendment at the time was that it might expose women to a military draft and combat. Obviously, women have now become integral components of America’s fighting forces - female soldiers have fought and died for this country - so that argument now feels antiquated. There were also arguments that women might lose alimony rights, as well as the advantages they had in child custody cases in divorce. But those situations have also evolved through the years.
So, it could be argued that the ERA that passed in 1972 is from a much different age.
But the general concept of equal protection under the law on the basis of sex should be universal. (In fact, 25 states have their own versions of the Equal Rights Amendment in their constitutions.) And now, as more women are in leadership roles in lawmaking, politics, business, the military and other endeavors, the spirit of the ERA should be a fact. And given the strength of the #MeToo movement, the demand for equal justice is louder and more powerful than ever.
But the reality that there’s even a perceived need for a #MeToo movement and the fact that, for instance, women in 2019 made only 79 cents for every dollar a man made, according to CNBC, paints a picture of lingering, frustrating inequity that remains rooted in the American landscape nearly four decades later.
So, if the ERA ratification fails to gain legal approval, a new version of it should be crafted and, eventually, put to the states for another vote.
When South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg announced this state’s lawsuit to halt the ERA’s implementation (a move that, otherwise, had an unfortunate symbolic look for this state), he noted in a press release, “If Congress wants to pass an updated version of the ERA, taking into consideration all the changes in the law since 1972, I have no doubt the South Dakota Legislature would debate the merits in a new ratification process.”
Ultimately, the matter of equal rights for men and women shouldn’t be a point of argument, whether it was in 1972 or it’s in 2020. But it is. One way or another, equal protection must become the spirit and rule of the land, not an exception. And if an ERA is needed to achieve that, then so be it.
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Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, Jan. 23
Lawmakers reach new low with latest transgender bill
It didn’t take long for South Dakota legislators, specifically those obsessed with discriminatory practices, to unveil their latest heartbreaking work of cruelty.
House Bill 1057, an act to “prohibit certain acts against children and provide a penalty therefor” championed by Republican anti-transgender crusader Fred Deutsch, was deemed to be of such pressing importance to the smooth operation of our state that it was the very first issue to be addressed by the House State Affairs Committee.
HB 1057 would make it a crime for medical professionals to provide gender-affirming surgeries or hormonal treatment for transgender children younger than 16. Forty-six other Republican state lawmakers, nearly half of the 105 total lawmakers in the House and Senate, leapt at this opportunity to tilt at windmills by signing on as co-sponsors to this solution for a problem that doesn’t exist.
The bill, which passed out of committee Wednesday by an 8-5 vote, is the latest attempt by conservative groups to erode the rights of transgender individuals on a national scale. Earlier attempts to limit bathroom usage and sports participation for trans students failed in South Dakota, and now we’re on the front lines once again, gaining national attention for all the wrong reasons.
We’re tired of having to write this editorial over and over. Bills like HB 1057 and its ignominious forebears exist only to scratch an ideological itch. This is culture-war red meat, a tiresome parade of hot-button social issue legislation of no practical benefit to our state but with plenty of potential downside. Our revenue-challenged state can ill-afford more unnecessary legal costs or further distractions from actual crises like the accelerating nursing home closures.
Our governor’s business-friendly pitch risks being drowned out by retrograde howls against diversity that repel new companies which might consider moving to South Dakota. Our tourism revenues will take even greater hits should we lose NCAA sporting events or face out-of-state travel bans because we legalize government-mandated discrimination.
Yet such economic concerns pale in comparison to the damage these repeated attacks can take on our youth, much less the damage that passing this legislation would inflict. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that transgender teens are significantly more likely to suffer from depression or be victimized than other teens and are a staggering five times more likely to have attempted suicide in the past year.
Sanford lobbyist Mitch Rave says that fewer than 20 of the one million patients seen in the Sanford Health system in 2019 – one-five hundredth of a percent – were patients younger than 18 being treated for gender dysphoria, and not all of those were patients in South Dakota.
In short, supporters of HB 1057 are “defending” against a phantom menace. They invoke scary words like “sterilization” and “mutilation” and “castration” which bear no relationship to the treatment that transgender pre-adolescents receive in South Dakota and the United States.
The internationally recognized standards of medical care for transgender children do not include surgical or hormonal treatments below age 16, although “puberty blockers” can be used to postpone the physical changes of adolescence. When transgender kids have access to a puberty blocker, their chances of suicide and mental health problems decline significantly, according to a study released this week in the medical journal Pediatrics. South Dakota doctors would be prohibited from providing such medically-indicated treatment were this bill to become law.
Anne Dilenschneider, a licensed professional mental health counselor in Sioux Falls specializing in gender health, noted that the transition process involves multiple medical appointments and referrals from mental health professionals. Despite HB 1057 supporters’ mischaracterizations of medical transitioning as hasty and ill-considered, “it’s a very slow process,” Dilenschneider said. “It’s not an overnight thing.”
In the too-familiar vein of politicians calling facts they disagree with “fake news,” Deutsch and the various out-of-state supporters testifying before the committee disparaged the treatment standards, which have been carefully crafted and evaluated by medical and mental health experts from around the world, as “medical experiments.” They dismissed the clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, one of many criteria required to be met prior to any sort of medical or surgical gender-affirmation, as based on a person’s feelings rather than objective science.
This marks the opening salvo along a new angle of attack by anti-transgender extremists, and it’s not unique to us. In the South Dakota Legislative Research Council’s November 2019 Legislator Update, Deutsch reported that an idea “that could benefit South Dakota” discussed at the Heritage Foundation’s Summit on Protecting Children from Sexualization he attended in October was to “establish legislation to criminalize doctors that provide sex change operations to children.”
When asked during the committee hearing about an identical bill introduced in Florida last week, Deutsch said that similar legislation that either has been or soon will be proposed in at least eight other states was inspired by his own “homegrown” bill.
Deutsch, a Watertown chiropractor who sponsored the 2016 transgender “bathroom” bill, styles HB 1057 as the “Vulnerable Child Protection Act.” That title gets everything right about the bill except for the “protection” part, for it is this bill that some of South Dakota’s most vulnerable children need protection from.
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Madison Daily Leader, Jan. 22
Plastics ban shouldn’t happen at the city level
A bill introduced in the South Dakota Legislature looks like it supports plastic bags, straws and other products, but it merely prohibits local governments from implementing a ban.
Plastic packaging is a huge environmental topic these days, as one-time use and disposal is causing a number of problems. The biggest symbol is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (also known as the Pacific trash vortex), which has plastics and other debris covering as much as 1.6 million square kilometers in the ocean. Some of the plastic is very small and is consumed by fish and marine mammals.
We believe more needs to be done, and quickly. But some laws — we think banning plastic packaging is among them — need to be done with a larger geography in mind, like statewide, nationwide or even multinational agreements. Eight U.S. states have banned single-use plastic bags, but a number of individual cities have also.
The Senate bill in South Dakota is intended to prevent confusing situations where a patchwork of cities allows plastic bags and others don’t. Let’s say the city of Harrisburg bans plastic bags at its stores, but Sioux Falls doesn’t. Stores literally across the street from one another would operate under different rules.
Legislative supporters may also be thinking about helping small businesses in South Dakota by preventing cumbersome rules being put upon them. Even so, we think it’s only a temporary Band-Aid. We think the combination of bans throughout the country and market pressure from consumers will eventually lead to the elimination of much of the plastic packaging.
The bill is probably fine, but South Dakota lawmakers and businesses should work to find ways we can contribute to fixing the problem of excess plastic.
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