Lee, Pressley, Garcia push for gender-neutral language in US legal code

House Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday to make the nation’s legal code more inclusive to women, nonbinary, intersex and gender-nonconforming Americans by replacing masculine generics with gender-neutral language.

The Equality in Our Laws Act, introduced Tuesday by Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), has been endorsed by the Equal Rights Amendment Coalition and SisTers PGH, a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization serving Black, transgender and nonbinary people.

“Words matter — especially the words that form the foundations of our country’s rule of law,” Lee said Tuesday in a news release. “It’s not shocking that, for generations, the US code intentionally wrote out women, Black, brown, queer and marginalized folks.”

“What is shocking is that today, equality is enshrined into neither our laws nor our Constitution – meaning neither our laws nor our constitution protects all people,” she added.

Tuesday’s proposal would authorize and direct the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (OLRC) — the nonpartisan House office responsible for preparing periodic updates to the U.S. code — “to make non-substantive, gender-neutral revisions” to the nonpositive law portions of the code.

Heads of federal agencies would be referred to as “the Secretary” rather than “he,” for example, and masculine nouns like “fireman” and “policeman” would be replaced by their gender-neutral equivalents.

The OLRC would be barred, however, from amending any portion of the nation’s code where gender “affects the substance, meaning or interpretation of the federal law,” such as the Violence Against Women Act and the statute establishing the Women-Owned Small Business Federal Contracting Program.

“America has long been a beacon of freedom and equality in the world. Yet, our legal code — the very foundation of our society — continues to use a language that isn’t reflective of the country’s diversity; it speaks in masculine generics, silencing women and folks who are a significant part of our diverse community,” said Garcia, one of just 12 openly LGBTQ members of the current Congress.

“The introduction of gender-neutral language throughout the U.S. Code will help ensure the law is truly representative of all Americans,” he said.

Prior research has shown that the use of masculine generics — using masculine nouns and pronouns to refer to people of all genders — reinforces gender stereotypes and social discrimination.

A 2015 study of job postings by researchers at the University of Bern and the Technical University of Munich found that women were perceived “to fit less well” than male applicants in high-status leadership positions when masculine job titles were used. A second study in 2016 found that the use of gender-neutral language “contributes to the reduction of gender stereotyping and discrimination.”

Similar actions have been taken at the state level, and states including Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin have passed legislation to include gender-neutral language in their constitutions.