Rosa's Law

Rosa's Law[1] is a United States law which replaced instances of "mental retardation" in law with "intellectual disability". The bill was introduced as S.2781 in the United States Senate on November 17, 2009, by Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). It passed the Senate unanimously on August 5, 2010, then the House of Representatives on September 22, and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 5.[2] The law is named after Rosa Marcellino, a girl with Down syndrome who was nine years old when it became law, and who, according to Barack Obama, "worked with her parents and her siblings to have the words 'mentally retarded' officially removed from the health and education code in her home state of Maryland."[3]

According to the report submitted to the Senate by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, "The committee believes that the terms "mentally retarded," "mental retardation," and variations of these terms, to describe individuals with intellectual disabilities are anachronistic, needlessly insensitive and stigmatizing, and clinically outdated."[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ Pub. L. 111-256 Archived 2021-03-01 at the Wayback Machine, 124 Stat. 2643 (2010).
  2. ^ S.2781 Archived 2022-01-28 at the Wayback Machine on GovTrack. Accessed July 31, 2011.
  3. ^ "Remarks by the President at the Signing of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010". whitehouse.gov. 8 October 2010. Archived from the original on 2021-03-09. Retrieved 2021-03-03 – via National Archives.
  4. ^ Pub. L. 111-256 Archived 2021-03-01 at the Wayback Machine, 124 Stat. 2643 (2010)


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