# The Words Matter Act of 2025

This bill updates federal law to replace outdated and offensive terminology with more respectful language when referring to people with intellectual disabilities. Specifically, it removes the terms "mentally retarded" and "mental retardation" from federal laws and replaces them with "intellectual disability" or "individuals with intellectual disabilities."

The changes apply across dozens of federal programs and laws that affect real people's lives. This includes healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid, military benefits for families, housing assistance, criminal justice programs, child nutrition programs, and various other federal services. For example, when federal law currently refers to "intermediate care facilities for the mentally retarded," it will now say "intermediate care facilities for individuals with intellectual disabilities." The same applies to regulations and rules that government agencies create to carry out these laws.

The bill makes clear that these are purely terminology changes—nothing about who qualifies for services, what benefits people receive, or how programs operate is supposed to change. It's essentially a cleanup effort to modernize language that many consider stigmatizing and outdated. The bill also requires federal agencies, when they update their regulations to reflect these changes, to explain that "intellectual disability" is the new term for what was previously called "mental retardation." Importantly, the bill doesn't force states to change their own state laws, though it encourages them to adopt the same updated terminology.