Rosa's Law is a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

law which replaced several instances of "mental retardation" in law with "

intellectual disability Intellectual disability (ID), also known as general learning disability in the United Kingdom and formerly mental retardation,Rosa's Law, Pub. L. 111-256124 Stat. 2643(2010). is a generalized neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by signifi ...

". The bill was introduced as S.2781 in the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

on November 17, 2009, by

Barbara Mikulski Barbara Ann Mikulski ( ; born July 20, 1936) is an American politician and social worker who served as a United States senator from Maryland from 1987 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she also served in the United States House of Repr ...

( D- MD). It passed the Senate unanimously on August 5, 2010, then the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

on September 22, and was signed into law by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

on October 5. The law is named for Rosa Marcellino, a girl with

Down syndrome Down syndrome or Down's syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is usually associated with physical growth delays, mild to moderate intellectual dis ...

who was nine years old when it became law, and who, according to President

, "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." Rosa's Law is part of a long line of changes that has been ongoing since the early 1900s. Words such as ''

idiot An idiot, in modern use, is a stupid or foolish person. 'Idiot' was formerly a technical term in legal and psychiatric contexts for some kinds of profound intellectual disability where the mental age is two years or less, and the person cannot ...

'' and '' moron'' were common in court documents and diagnosis throughout the early 1900s. In the 1960s, changes in the law led to the use of such terms as ''mental retardation''. With the loss of ''idiot'' (IQ 0–25), ''

imbecile The term ''imbecile'' was once used by psychiatrists to denote a category of people with moderate to severe intellectual disability, as well as a type of criminal.Fernald, Walter E. (1912). ''The imbecile with criminal instincts.'' Fourth editi ...

'' (IQ 26–50) and ''moron'' (IQ 51–75), specific descriptors of IQ-based intelligence were abandoned because of negative public

sentiment Sentiment may refer to: *Feelings, and emotions *Public opinion, also called sentiment *Sentimentality, an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason *Sentimental novel, an 18th-century literary genre *Market sentiment, opt ...

. Under Rosa's law, these would be described respectively as profound, severe, and moderate levels of intellectual disability.

References

Acts of the 111th United States Congress United States federal disability legislation Intellectual disability {{US-law-stub

See also

References