The award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors recognizes ‘outstanding and meritorious public service’ to U.S. cities.
President Joe Biden closed out his last full week as president on Jan. 17 by accepting the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ highest award.
The nonpartisan organization’s Award for Distinguished Public Service recognizes an individual’s “outstanding and meritorious public service” to U.S. cities.
Addressing the conference’s winter meeting in Washington, Biden said he was honored to receive the award from “an organization of character and consequence.”
“This is one of the last events that I’ll be doing as president,” he noted. “The reason I chose to be here is because of the first thing I did as president was to speak to this conference.”
Biden highlighted his accomplishments in the four years since, from the passage of the COVID-19 stimulus package in 2021 to his administration’s investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, and climate-focused initiatives.
The president also touted his earlier declaration that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is now part of the Constitution.
“Throughout my career, I’ve been clear, no one, no one, no one should be discriminated against based on their sex,” Biden said, noting that three-fourths of the states have ratified the amendment, as is required for its adoption.
“That benchmark was passed when Virginia ratified the ERA a few years ago. Today, I affirmed the Equal Rights Amendment has cleared all the necessary hurdles to be added to the U.S. Constitution now,” the outgoing president said.
He declared before the U.S. Conference of Mayors that the Equal Rights Amendment is “the law of the land—now!”
The National Archives disagreed.
“[The ERA] cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions,” U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan and Deputy Archivist William J. Bosanko said last month in a joint statement.
A spokesperson for the National Archives reaffirmed that stance to The Epoch Times on Jan. 17.
“This is a longstanding position for the Archivist and the National Archives. The underlying legal and procedural issues have not changed,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
The main obstacle preventing the amendment’s certification was the deadline Congress set for its ratification, which was June 30, 1982. While Virginia brought the amendment over the required 38-state threshold in 2020, it did so 38 years too late.
The president, meanwhile, lacks the authority to unilaterally certify constitutional amendments.
The amendment is just one of several bucket list items Biden has tried to check off in recent weeks as he prepares to exit the White House. Others have included canceling student loans for 150,000 borrowers, banning offshore drilling, and granting sweeping pardons to certain convicted individuals, including some death row inmates, drug offenders, and his son Hunter Biden.
President-elect Donald Trump is due to be sworn in as the 47th president inside the Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 20.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.