Although an ardent advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had the elementary honesty to acknowledge the simple reality that Congress’s deadline for ratification of the ERA expired decades ago and that any effort to adopt the ERA would therefore require “starting over again.” (See this post of mine from a year ago for a fuller account of the relevant history and law.) Not so, alas, for Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney and others who are pushing the elaborate pretense that the Archivist of the United States can make the ERA part of the Constitution by falsely certifying that it’s been lawfully ratified.

Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, published an excellent column yesterday debunking Maloney’s position. Here’s how he sums up why he’s awarding Maloney his worst “Four Pinocchios” rating:

Maloney is offering false hope about the archivist’s role — and falsely putting words in [Archivist David] Ferriero’s mouth. His 2012 letter to her did not indicate support for the ERA. Moreover, two major court rulings have concluded that the ERA’s ratification deadline, as set by Congress, has expired — a position embraced by both the Trump and Biden Justice Departments. The Supreme Court in 1982 also indicated support for the idea that the deadline has passed. At this point, pending further court or congressional action, it is simply wrong to claim that the ERA already has met constitutional muster and all that is needed is the approval of the archivist.

By contrast, this Atlantic article, also published yesterday under the title “The Biden Appointee Who Could Change the Constitution,” sympathetically regurgitates the zombie-ERA advocates’ claim.