A growing excitement surrounds Virginia’s vote this week to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, guaranteeing equal legal rights for all United States citizens regardless of sex. Virginia is the 38th state to ratify the E.R.A., pushing the country over the three-quarters threshold required for a constitutional amendment — assuming that the decisions of five states to rescind their ratification over the years don’t count.

Why is the E.R.A. gaining newfound momentum decades after the ratification deadline passed and initial momentum fizzled? Perhaps in the face of #MeToo and a misogynous president, we want an insurance policy, a stopgap for rights that seem to be constantly eroding. Understandable, no doubt. But as someone who has worked for equal rights for women for nearly 40 years and has tried to provide a clear description of the ways bias impacts women’s lives, I wonder whether the E.R.A. is the best fight to pick right now. Because make no mistake — it would be a battle. President Trump’s Department of Justice has already issued a 38-page opinion declaring the E.R.A. dead, dead, dead.

And this time around, it’s not clear that the concrete gains would be worth the political backlash.

For one thing, Congress imposed a deadline for states’ ratification of the E.R.A. — 1982. Was that binding? Who would decide? Most likely, the Supreme Court. But Mr. Trump has tilted the court sharply to the right, and there’s no guarantee it would second-guess Congress’s decision.

But the deeper problem is that it would be the same Supreme Court that would interpret the Equal Rights Amendment. Do we really believe that this Supreme Court will take a bold view of the E.R.A.’s vague promises? Not likely, particularly considering what many social conservatives think about when they think of the E.R.A.