WASHINGTON – Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today made the following statement about his vote on the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA):

“Today, the United States Senate voted on an amendment to our Constitution. I'm very fond of our Constitution, and I think it has done an extraordinary job for the American people. But today, my Democratic colleagues tried to break the rules—they tried to break the rules to add an amendment when three-quarters of our states don't support this change.

“And the deadline for offering this amendment to the Constitution is, and was, long gone.

“I mean, in effect, what my Democratic colleagues tried to do was change the rules in the middle of a game. Congress does not have the authority to ratify this amendment. It's just a fact because the deadline Congress set to ratify this amendment expired 40 years ago—not four years ago, 40 years ago—in 1982.

“What Senator Schumer, the majority leader for the Democratic Party, tried to do today was basically pretend that fact is not a fact. And he required us to vote on it anyway, even though the deadline was 40 years ago, and even though our founding members of the republic made the rules for amending the Constitution very, very clear in Article V of the Constitution.

“So, I voted ‘no’ today. I don't think it's right to cheat. Since 1789, there have been more than 11,000 proposed amendments to our Constitution. It's only been amended 27 times, and every time it was amended, the people and the Congress followed the rules—unlike Senator Schumer's attempt today.

“The deadline to ratify this amendment passed decades ago, in fact, four decades ago. It did not have the necessary support at that time from three-quarters of the states. It did not have the support of the people of Louisiana at that time, and I was not going, today, to help some members in the United States Senate, in effect, to try to cheat to change our Constitution. And that's why I voted ‘no.’”