Sponsors (16)
The bill modernizes federal terminology to reduce stigma and clarify who federal rules cover, improving dignity and legal clarity, at the cost of modest but real administrative and compliance burdens and without creating new substantive legal protections.
People with intellectual and other disabilities will be referred to with modern, person-first/respectful terminology across federal statutes and regulations, reducing stigma and improving dignity in interactions with government and service providers.
Federal programs and administrators (e.g., Medicaid, housing, DOJ grant programs) will have updated, clearer statutory and regulatory language and more consistent definitions, reducing legal ambiguity about who provisions apply to.
States retain flexibility and are not forced to rewrite state laws, limiting additional compliance costs and preserving state-level autonomy in implementation.
Federal, state, and local agencies must spend staff time and money updating regulations, forms, training, and guidance to reflect terminology changes, creating administrative and compliance costs.
Providers and beneficiaries may face temporary confusion or disruptions if agencies do not uniformly update implementing regulations and guidance across programs and jurisdictions.
Ambiguities between federal and state terminology could persist, causing cross-jurisdictional confusion for service providers and people receiving services when interacting across systems.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Updates federal statutory and regulatory language to replace outdated terms like "mental retardation" with modern, person-first language such as "intellectual disability."
Official title: To amend Federal law to remove the terms "mentally retarded" and "mental retardation", and for other purposes.
Introduced May 15, 2025 by Pete Sessions · Last progress May 15, 2025
Updates dozens of federal statutes and regulations to replace outdated, offensive terms such as "mental retardation" and "the mentally retarded" with modern, person-first language like "intellectual disability" and "individuals with intellectual disabilities." The changes are word substitutions only and explicitly do not alter program eligibility, rights, responsibilities, or substantive definitions. Agencies must treat prior regulatory language as referring to the new terms and must note that the prior terms were formerly used when they amend implementing regulations.