The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was designed mainly to invalidate many state and federal laws that discriminate against women; its central underlying principle was that sex should not determine the legal rights of American men or women. The text of the proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution stated that "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex" and …
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…that many sex-discriminatory state and federal laws perpetuated a state of economic dependence among a large number of women and that laws determining child support and job opportunities should be designed for the individual rather than for one sex. Many advocates of the ERA believed that the failure to adopt the measure as an amendment would cause women to lose many gains and would give a negative mandate to courts and legislators regarding feminist issues.