Voters across geographic and partisan divides strongly support incorporating additional protections into New York’s constitution that explicitly protect reproductive rights and prohibit discrimination across a wider range of individual characteristics, according to a new poll shared exclusively with Gothamist.
New Yorkers hitting the polls in November will be asked if they support the so-called Equal Rights Amendment, which adds a new set of constitutional protections under the state’s equal protection clause that prohibit discrimination by the government based on someone’s “ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex — including their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, reproductive health care and autonomy,” as detailed in the legislation.
The state’s current equal rights provision, which offers people protections based on “race, color, creed or religion,” was adopted in 1938. The updated language picked up new momentum after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
The initiative’s backers are getting an early start in building more support for the measure. They launched a statewide campaign this week that aims to build on some “hard lessons” learned from the surprising defeat of two other recent ballot measures.
Overall, 71% of voters polled said they would vote in favor of the New York ERA, including 82% of registered Democrats, 51% of registered Republicans and 70% of unaffiliated voters, according to the survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a left-leaning polling organization.
“If you look at the data, there’s just broad swaths of people across demographic groups who agree with the need to codify those protections,” said Angela Kuefler, a partner at GSG, who has researched similar, abortion-specific ballot initiatives in Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio and Colorado. “I think the urgency is really coming from what [voters] are seeing happening in other…
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