New York’s ‘Equal Rights Amendment’ Is a Left-Wing Trojan Horse

I n the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade and returning the abortion issue to the individual states, New York and other states took steps to place constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights on their ballots.

Most of these ballot measures specifically reference abortion and describe the legal parameters of its authorization.

Not so New York’s. Within days of Dobbs, Governor Kathy Hochul and Democratic legislators, who control supermajorities in the state senate and assembly, crafted a constitutional amendment ostensibly to protect abortion rights but that deals with much more than abortion — while never even mentioning that word.

The amendment, appearing as Proposal 1 on the ballot, is a Trojan horse, stealthily adding new protected classes of citizens whose rights are already protected under state law. It would embed a transgender-activist and DEI agenda into the state constitution while at the same time giving new rights to noncitizens.

The proposed amendment would revise the state constitution’s Section 11, which protects citizens from discrimination based on race, creed, color, or religion. Proposal 1 would add new protected classes based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, and sex. “Sex” includes “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.”

Existing state law already protects individuals in each of these new protected classes from discrimination. Adding these categories to the state constitution creates inevitable conflict with other long-standing statutory protections, particularly the explicit protection of parental rights to make health-care decisions for their minor children.

Under New York law, a school nurse cannot administer medications, even Tylenol, without parental consent. A minor can’t receive body piercings or tattoos or enter a tanning salon without permission from a parent or guardian. When it comes to abortion, however, New York is one of a small number of states that permit girls aged 16 or 17 to receive one without parental consent.

Passage of Proposal 1 would ratify the transgender-activist movement’s agenda to allow minors to obtain medical “treatments” without their parents’ permission. That is because Proposal 1 applies to all persons and makes no distinctions for minors, thus potentially nullifying parental consent. Parents would be unable to prevent their minor children — children legally too young to give consent in a tattoo parlor — from taking puberty blockers or even from undergoing surgeries that leave their bodies permanently altered. A basic principle of constitutional interpretation is that rights embedded in a constitution will take legal precedence over mere statutes, and that includes statutes establishing requirements for parental consent.

It’s not hard to envision the fallout from the passage of Prop 1. Given their history of aggressive advocacy, transgender-rights organizations are likely to bring a minor plaintiff seeking medical procedures without parental consent into court as a test case. Or it might be the ACLU, a main proponent of Prop 1, or the Human Rights Campaign that brings such a case. Planned Parenthood, another proponent of Prop 1, is one of the largest providers of transgender treatments, and one shouldn’t overlook the financial incentives of expanding its marketplace.

Constitutional protections based on gender identity or expression will also create a legal basis for males wishing to compete in girls’ and women’s sports. New York attorney general Letitia James, another Prop 1 advocate, has sued Nassau County over a local law precluding trans-identifying athletes from participating in opposite-sex sports at county parks. A recent statewide Siena poll indicates that 66 percent of New Yorkers oppose males’ participation in female sports, but Democrats hope to quietly secure such rights in their amendment purporting to protect abortion rights.

And then there is the inclusion of “national origin” in Prop 1. State and local governments in New York have already spent billions providing benefits to illegal migrants. Prop 1 could provide a legal requirement that they continue to do so, regardless of budget constraints. In addition, New York City has passed a law permitting noncitizen voting. While this law has been stymied in lower courts, the matter will soon be argued before the highest state court, the very liberal Court of Appeals. Activists are likely to cite Prop 1’s protection against discrimination based on national origin as supporting noncitizen voting.

Perhaps even more alarming is a provision in Prop 1 creating a constitutional basis for what amounts to reverse discrimination. The provision permits the “adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice that is designed to prevent or dismantle discrimination on the basis of a characteristic” contained in the amendment.

This section could, for instance, be used to justify racial quotas for admission to New York City’s selective high schools. Liberals have argued that Asian Americans have an unfair advantage in gaining admission to these schools because of their strong performance on standardized tests, and that their rate of admission, now over 50 percent, should more closely reflect their percentage of the city population. While such a plan would raise federal 14th Amendment issues, a state constitutional provision would give weight to this argument.

Prop 1 could also be used to justify the perpetuation of DEI programs at state colleges and universities or to validate the concept of state reparations for slavery, an idea that Albany is already considering.

Governor Hochul and legislative advocates hope that Prop 1, which they misleadingly call the “Equal Rights Amendment,” will mobilize New York voters based on the false claim that abortion rights are at risk. New York enacted abortion rights in 1970, three years prior to Roe. Regardless of one’s position on abortion, no one can credibly claim such rights are at risk in the Empire State.

Proposition 1 is a gambit based on a lie that abortion rights in the state are under threat. It’s loaded up with other agendas — having nothing to do with abortion rights — that a majority of New Yorkers, if they were aware of them, would almost surely oppose. On November 5, we will find out whether the gambit was successful.