Governor Maura Healey signed a bill removing offensive and outdated language from Massachusetts state law, capping a legislative push that began more than two decades ago. State Senator Patricia Jehlen joined advocates at the bill signing, marking the culmination of an effort she first launched in 2004 to strike derogatory terms from the state's general laws.
The legislation, formally known as Senate Bill 2563, updates 346 sections of the Massachusetts General Laws, replacing derogatory and archaic terms with person-first terminology, according to Mass.gov. The bill, titled An Act Amending Certain Laws Relative to Individuals with Disabilities, strikes the R-word from state law and removes the outdated reference handicap in favor of person with a disability terminology, as reported by The Somerville Times. The Senate also added the term deaf or hard of hearing to several sections and replaced the outdated term hearing-impaired elsewhere in state law, per the same account, so that statutory language finally reflects terminology preferred by the people it describes.
A Two-Decade Campaign Reaches Its Finish Line
Jehlen filed her first bill to remove ten sections of the general laws that used the R-word back in 2004, according to the same report — a modest start to what became a 22-year effort that ultimately uncovered nearly 400 sections needing modernization, per The Somerville Times. Before this year's cleanup, the Massachusetts General Laws still included over 350 sections using offensive words, the outlet's report notes, underscoring how sprawling the state's statutory language had become over decades of accumulated code. “Words are important. Language changes. We should use language that respects the people it refers to, and listen to them,” Jehlen said, per the article.
The Massachusetts Legislature passed the bill on June 4, 2026, and Healey signed it into law on June 12, 2026, according to Mass.gov. The signing brought disability-rights advocates together with Jehlen to mark the achievement.
Renaming State Agencies to Match the Law
The statutory cleanup follows a broader pattern of Massachusetts renaming agencies at the request of the people they serve. The Department of Mental Retardation is now the Department of Disability Services, the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission is now MassAbility, and the Executive Office of Elder Affairs is now the Executive Office of Aging and Independence, or AGE, according to The Somerville Times. Mass.gov's own account of the MassAbility rebrand describes Healey signing that name change on September 13, 2024, to modernize career services and scrub archaic terms like handicapped from the commission's enabling statutes.
That renaming trend stretches back further still. The Legislature enacted legislation in 2008 to rename the Department of Mental Retardation as the Department of Disability Services, a change that took effect on June 30, 2009. Separately, the Executive Office of Elder Affairs is now the Executive Office of Aging & Independence.
Federal Roots and the Case for State Action
The push to overhaul disrespectful legal language did not begin in Massachusetts. President Barack Obama signed Rosa's Law on October 5, 2010, replacing the terms mental retardation and mentally retarded with intellectual disability across federal health, education, and labor statutes, according to Special Olympics. But that federal enactment did not mandate changes to individual state statutes, according to The Arc, leaving state codes such as the Massachusetts General Laws to be updated independently through state legislation. Massachusetts later updated its laws through S.2563.
The Senate also approved measures during the 2025-2026 session to create an expert panel of legislative, executive, and legal appointees tasked with conducting ongoing reviews of state statutes to identify and remove anachronisms, per a Facebook post from The Arc of Massachusetts, suggesting the work of scrubbing outdated language from the law books will continue beyond this year's bill.
Advocates Say Language Shapes Dignity
Melissa Reilly, an advocate for people with disabilities and former policy advisor to Senator James B. Eldridge, said people with disabilities should be treated and respected and not mocked, judged, or bullied for their disabilities, according to The Somerville Times. She added that people with disabilities are unique, able, capable, hardworking, and deserving of dignity and respect, per the outlet's report.
Maura Sullivan, chief executive officer of The Arc of Massachusetts, said the bill reaffirms a commitment to uplifting and valuing the disability community, according to the same article. The office of Senator Patricia D. Jehlen provided the information for that report, capping a story that spans from a single 2004 bill targeting ten sections of law to a 2026 overhaul touching hundreds more across the Massachusetts General Laws.
