On Feb. 9, 2020, New Jersey will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Garden State’s adoption of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Amendment, which barred discrimination in voting “by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” was finally ratified to the federal Constitution by a single-vote margin in the Tennessee legislature on August 18, 1920, eight months after New Jersey’s assent. That final passage completed the necessary ratification “by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states” as required under Article V of the United States Constitution, thereby giving women the full and unfettered equal right to vote nationwide.

At the risk of burying the lede, however, that milestone may be eclipsed by the ratification of the long-pending “Equal Rights Amendment,” a sweeping gender equality measure that has languished since the 1970′s. More commonly known as the “ERA,” the Equal Rights Amendment mandates full Constitutional equality in “the United States or by any state on account of sex.”  First drafted by New Jersey native Alice Paul and introduced in Congress on Dec. 10, 1923, it has had a long, storied history, including as a rallying cry of the gender rights movement. Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York has been pushing for ratification since she came to Congress in 1993.