Three days before leaving office, President Joe Biden has made a surprising announcement: He declared that a decades-old proposed Constitutional amendment enshrining equal rights on the basis of sex is now “the law of the land.”

Except it isn’t.

A senior administration official told CNN that Biden was not taking executive action but merely “stating an opinion” that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was in effect. The National Archives — the federal government agency that is the official keeper of the Constitution — has stated for years that they cannot legally publish the amendment, because they’re bound by a Department of Justice holding that says they can’t. Plus, Donald Trump is about to take office and will likely express a different opinion.

What’s going on?

The Equal Rights Amendment, which states 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,” was overwhelmingly approved by Congress in 1972 and sent to the states for ratification. Congress originally set a deadline of 1979 for ratification; it was later extended to 1982.

That deadline came and went without enough states voting to ratify, and the understanding from the political and legal establishment has generally been that the ERA was dead.

But progressive advocates have for years been trying to use some creative but dubious legal arguments to claim that enough states actually have ratified the ERA and it should go into effect.

Some states voted to ratify the ERA after the deadline passed, and advocates claim that the deadline — as well as the fact that some states also rescinded their........

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