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Mr. EDWARDS. You may proceed.

TESTIMONY OF DONNA CARLSON, ARIZONA STATE REPRESENTATIVE, FIRST VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL

Ms. CARLSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I welcome the opportunity to testify here.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to present testimony on behalf of the American Legislative Exchange Council and as a legislator from Arizona.

For the sake of brevity, I will not read the entire statement of the ALEC chairman, the Honorable Woody Jenkins of Louisiana. Mr. Jenkins' statement, along with a composite paper of press comments on the extension, is in the form of a letter mailed to every State legislator on March 8, 1978. In his letter, Mr. Jenkins states:

As a constitutional amendment, ERA deserved a fair hearing. But 7 years is a reasonable time. No other constitutional amendment in our history has ever taken more than 4 years.

When speaking in support of the 7-year rule, ERA proponent Senator Birch Bayh told the U.S. Senate: "The 7-year time limitation assures that ratification reflects the contemporaneous views of the people."

Changing and extending the ratification time for a constitutional amendment is a dangerous precedent to set. Future constitutional amendments could be sent to the State legislatures for indefinite or continued periods of time.

In addition to the serious legal precedent, extending the time for the ERA will open up to legislative and court challenges all the past ratifications and rescissions of ERA, because those States did so under the original 7-year limit established by Congress.

Whether or not it is legal to extend the time period to 14 years, it seems grievously unfair to put the ERA monkey on the backs of State legislators for 14 years. What would you think of a football coach who demanded a fifth quarter because his team was behind?

Speaking now as a legislator from Arizona, I would call your attention to the letters from several Arizona legislative leaders which are attached. They include a brief statement from—

The Honorable Frank Kelley, speaker;

The Honorable Peter Kay, chairman of the house judiciary committee;

The Honorable Stanley Akers, former speaker and presently chairman of the ways and means committee;

The Honorable Leo Corbet, former judiciary committee chairman and presently minority leader of the senate;

The Honorable Bob Stump, former senate president and presently Congressman for Congressional District 3;

The Honorable Trudy Camping, State senator;

The Honorable Tom Goodwin, chairman of the house appropriations committee;

The Honorable Ed Swyer, president of the senate.

Mr. Chairman, these letters all have a common theme. They state that the amendment has had full and fair debate in the State of Arizona. They further state that extension of time limitation would be unfair, wrong, and serve no useful purpose.

I would call your attention to the statement of our speaker which specifically speaks to the issue of extension. As you will note, there

are two additional attachments to his letter. One is a copy of a substitute amendment to a memorial offered in Committee of the Whole on March 30, 1978. Second is a copy of the portion of the Journal of the House which deals with the amendment.

The amendment, which was offered on a memorial to Congress dealing with the Orme Dam, substituted a memorial in favor of extension of the time limit on the ERA. The amendment failed by a vote of 13 ayes, 37 nays, and 10 not voting.

The sponsor, not willing to accept the 3 to 1 defeat in Committee of the Whole, then offered a substitute motion to the majority leader's motion, which would amend the report of the Committee of the Whole to read that HCM-2004 be given a do-pass recommendation with the floor amendment which had previously failed. A rollcall vote was requested and the substitute motion failed by a vote of 14 ayes, 44 nays, and 2 not voting. As our speaker stated: "This is a decisive indication that our legislators do not favor the extension."

In addition to the legislator's statements, I have submitted to you a memo which shows the history of all the hearings and committee meetings held specifically on the amendment. Our conservative estimate is 70 hours-exclusive of House floor debate-we do not keep a record of the time we debate each issue-have been spent since 1973. Hearings were also held in the Senate in 1972, and those records are not reflected on the memo. One of your former colleagues, John Conlan, was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Even though the time for introduction of bills and memorials and the resolution had passed, it was introduced by three of the women legislators-and I might add, for your information, that two of the original sponsors of that resolution in Arizona are now two of the leading opponents to ratification.

The 1972 records are not included on the memorandum, apparently those records have been sent over to the archives and I didn't want to send my aide over to dig them out.

Ms. CARLSON. This is a total of 14 hours per year, and I can attest from personal knowledge that the backsides of many of our legislators have gone to sleep sitting and listening to hours and hours of testimony.

As the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee stated, "The only other issue that has taken up more time in the past 6 years ** has been revision of the entire criminal code"-which we just completed last year, and we're now in the process of some corrective amendments.

Outside of the legislature, there has been a very spirited and continued debate on the issue. During 1975 when I served as vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, I personally participated in 90 debates and equal time speeches on the ERA. I put a lot of mileage on both my car and myself that year, because the 90 unpaid public appearances included cities and towns throughout the entire State.

In the printed media, I would suspect the only local issue that has had more column inches would be the trial on the murder of investigative reporter Don Bolles. My aide interviewed Loyal Meek, editor of the Phoenix Gazette, the largest afternoon paper in Arizona, and found that the Gazette had run a yearly average of 20 editorial and 9 syndicated columns. The morning paper, also owned by Pulliam Publishing, had run 47 editorials in 1975 alone and an average of 19

syndicated columns per year. On several occasions, many papers ran full-page articles on the pro and con of the ERA. And when people like Mrs. Carpenter came to Arizona, she usually got at least half a page of coverage. I have reduced three samples and submitted them with this testimony.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I believe the information I have supplied shows that the proposed 27th amendment has had full and fair debate in Arizona. We have, in the course of the controversy, examined our statutes and corrected inequities where they existed.

In 1973, we went through all of our statutes and changed the laws which were discriminatory. That was called the "equal rights bill❞— House bill 2280-and it took a lot of work to go through the entire statutes of Arizona.

We have determined by the flood of constituent letters and calls, that the people of Arizona do not favor ratification and feel that the issue of women's rights is being properly handled on the State and national legislative levels. However, Mr. Chairman, we have many other issues that demand attention, and the 14 hours per year that we have spent on the ERA could be used to address those issues in the future.

But anyway, Mr. Chairman, we feel that the issue has been debated, the arguments have been set forth, and the extension of time limitation is unfair, and probably wouldn't serve any purpose other than taking up a lot more of our time that we could spend dealing with the issues that demand our attention.

Thank you very much.

Mr. EDWARDS. Thank you very much, Representative Carlson.

Our next witness is Hon. William J. Wiseman, Jr., a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

Representative Wiseman, we're pleased to have you here today, and we'll receive your written testimony.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wiseman follows:]

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM J. WISEMAN, JR., DISTRICT No. 69, (TULSA COUNTY), HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, STATE OF OKLAHOMA

I urge you to reject the proposal that the Congress should extend the time limit which was originally imposed for ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment. As one who is opposed to any discrimination by which an individual is prejudiced, I nevertheless oppose altering the ratification period for a variety of constitutional, policy and strategic reasons. I would urge, rather, that you permit the proposed amendment to wither by its own terms; and that you redraft and resubmit a new Equal Rights Amendment to the States for ratification, an amendment which is more limited in its scope and less uncertain in its meaning.

In order to explain the basis for my conclusions, let me tell a bit about the ERA's struggles in Oklahoma, and about my interactions with those struggles. I think that our experience in Oklahoma may be fairly typical of those states which failed to ratify the amendment in the first rush of enthusiasm and good spirits. After this first wave of rapid and casual assent there was, in a number of perhaps less sophisticated states in uncertain pause, a hesitation, followed by controversy, anger, confusion, ill-will, and growing ambivalence among the saved. When I first entered the Oklahoma Legislature in 1974, I was a strong advocate of the ERA, and I have voted for ratification on a number of occasions during my two terms in the House. I believe that most of the opposition to the ERA was the uninformed raving of a group of frightened souls who somehow saw the amendment as an affirmation of all the things which they detested in a frightening,

threatening world. Many of the objections lodged against the ERA were specious, absurd, ludicrous, even pathetic.

But the opposition did, nevertheless, delay ratification. And I am quite certain that in Oklahoma, delay will ripen into defeat for the ERA in its present form. During the past year or so, two things have occurred which have altered the way I feel about the amendment. First, my regular polling of the district I represent has indicated a remarkable shift over the past four years-from moderate support to strong opposition to the ERA. And regardless of the validity or invalidity of the reasons for such a shift, the shift has taken place.

Second, my own understanding of the language of the proposed amendment has changed. My early interpretation of the ERA's meaning was that it would make sex, in effect, a suspect classification, and that the broad grant of power to the Congress in Section 2 was nothing more than traditional Constitutional boilerplate.

My conviction now, however, is that while the language of Section 1 might be construed merely to make sexual classification suspect, it might also be interpreted to prohibit legal classifications based upon sex, a result which I would strongly oppose. Moreover, I have come to believe that the grant of power to the Congress under Section 2 of the ERA has the practical effect of granting to the Congress the powers of all three branches of government-enforcement and interpretation as well as legislation. I have tried to imagine the sort of legislation which would be authorized under Section 2 but which would be prohibited without it. And the only such examples I can contrive are themselves most undesirable such as mandatory sexual quotas in employment.

I must add some uncomfortable candor at this point. I wish that I could state unequivocally that the shift in my own thinking was a result of pure ratiocination, uninfluenced by political winds and pressures. I can't. Although I believe that my conclusions are valid, my "second look" at the ERA was doubtless motivated in part by the substantial shift in the feelings of my own constituency.

The reason I've described my own thoughts and shifts on the ERA is to attempt to show you that there are very real problems with the proposed amendment, even for persons who believe in many of the goals of the women's movement, who are committed to ensuring full rights and opportunities for women, and who oppose any and all prejudicial discrimination.

I won't dwell on the constitutional murkiness which would result from an attempt to extend time for ratification. Nor will I discuss the lack of "fair play" which would be perceived in changing rules late in a game. And I won't comment on the polarizing and unproductive struggle over ratification of a doomed amendment which at best will be little more than a symbol, and at worst would involve a radical restructuring of society-depending on what the words would mean.

Instead, I'd like to plead for the strategic advantages of another course: resubmitting a somewhat altered ERA to the States for ratification. Now that all the fears and warnings are already out in the arena, it should be possible to redraw the amendment so as to avoid those possible abuses and misinterpretations which trouble many of us. If the amendment were drawn so that it merely had the effect of establishing sex as a suspect classification (but not necessarily a prohibited one), I believe that it would be ratified by 50 states within 50 weeks. Section 2 should, I feel, be deleted as undesirable; and Section 3 should be deleted as unnecessary.

As a matter of fact, I believe that sex is already a suspect classification, and that the U.S. Supreme Court would so rule should such a determination be necessary to resolve a case before them. Yet since one cannot predict the arrival of such a case, I see no harm whatever in establishing the suspicion of sexual classification with a carefully drawn constitutional amendment. To do so would find virtually no opposition in any quarter.

But to prohibit sex as a legal classification under any circumstances, and to make a broad grant of new power to the Congress is most undesirable in my view. And I do not believe that it will happen. So I can see no advantage whatever in prolonging a struggle which has long since miscarried, when we can instead move on to the many other urgent problems we face by adopting a redrawn and more carefully limited version of the Equal Rights Amendment.

TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM J. WISEMAN, JR., REPRESENTATIVE FOR DISTRICT NO. 69 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA

Mr. WISEMAN. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I'm Bill Wiseman from Tulsa, Okla., and I have been in the Oklahoma House for over the past 4 years.

We hear a lot of people say that, in opposition to the extension of time, that they're tired of the ERA, tired of the debate, and wish it would go away. The question of the ERA debate and sexual discrimination will never go away in this country until it's been established one way or another that sex is a suspect classification.

Now, my concern, as someone who, in the past, has voted for the equal rights amendment, and who at present is rather ambivalent about it, worried about it, my concern is, what is the best way to get from where we are today to that point in the future where it is established that sex is a suspect classification. I think it already is, but for various reasons the Supreme Court hasn't said so, precisely. I think it's fine to have that statement made and that principle established by constitutional amendment, but I think that the best way to get there is to redraft and resubmit another equal rights amendment.

The reason I say that, aside from the policy questions and the constitutional questions about the extent of the time limit-I won't address that. Aside from those problems-and there are problems with that from a strategic standpoint-at least two questions have come up in the great body of debate over the last 7 years that are very trouble

some.

Now, most of the objections to the equal rights amendment have struck me as ranging from ridiculous to funny, pathetic, whatever. But there are some questions that have been raised that may have some merit. First of all, does the language in the equal rights amendment serve to make sex a suspect classification, which was my initial opinion, or does it or might it make sex a prohibited classification, which would be something very different, and in the judgment of many of my colleagues, very undesirable.

The second problem is, what does the grant of authority in section 2 really involve. In other words, what kinds of-and it is said, well, that's been traditional language in other amendments. And that's right, but what kind of law would be authorized to be passed by the Congress? Under the language the Congress would be empowered by appropriate legislation, whatever. What kind of laws would be authorized, be passed by the Congress by that language, which would not be authorized right now?

I've had a great deal of difficulty imagining what kind of laws. that would involve, what kind of an extension that would be. And the only examples I can come up with are rather undesirable to me, things like mandatory sexual quotas for all industry and things like that, that go far beyond the scope of what originally I felt the purpose of the idea of the equal rights amendment was.

So, to summarize, ERA is not going to go away. It won't go away until that time-and eventually, we will reach that time-when sex

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