Ableist Language

The Two States Where the GOP Is Taking on Ableist Language

Disability rights used to be bipartisan. A pair of Republican-led initiatives might signal a return to form.

Julia Métraux

Nevada State Sen. Robin Titus—at the time a member of its state House—received an email from a speech pathologist in rural Nevada. The pathologist and his students had noticed that the state constitution used the phrase “deaf and dumb” to describe people who were deaf or hard of hearing. 

“He said, ‘Hey, this is just wrong. We shouldn’t be using this terminology anymore,’” Sen. Titus, the Nevada senate’s Republican minority leader, told me. Where people with disabilities are concerned, Sen. Titus says official language should not put “some negative connotation on what their needs are,” as such terms do. 

Now that the bill has passed Nevada’s House and Senate unanimously in two consecutive sessions—a prerequisite to place an amendment on the state ballot—Nevada voters will decide whether to remove the words “insane,” “feeble-minded” and “dumb” in describing, for example, programs that help disabled people find employment, replacing them with more modern terms. 

Nevada is one of 16 states, including Colorado and Mississippi, that still officially use the word “insane” to refer to people with mental illness in their constitution. Washington was the first state to remove the word from its constitution via a ballot measure, in 1988. Ableist language in government also remains an issue at the national level, with a Senate bill being introduced this year to try and get a slur for people with intellectual disabilities out of the US Code.

Nevada is not the only state where voters will decide whether to remove ableist language in November. A similar measure in North Dakota—like Nevada’s, introduced by a GOP legislator with unanimous bipartisan support—would update names such as “state hospital for the insane” with language like “for the care of individuals with mental illness.”

“This is an important step for our state as it signifies that how we talk about individuals with disabilities matters and all individuals deserve to be treated with dignity and respect,” Veronica Zietz, the executive director of North Dakota’s Protection and Advocacy Project, wrote in an email. “This ballot measure is also creating public awareness of disability issues and the value of people with disabilities.”

State Sen. Titus was not surprised to find bipartisan support for her Nevada bill. “We can identify problems, but we don’t always have a pathway” to solving them, Titus said. “Both parties,” she said, “will get on board” when a solution piques their interest.

There is no formal opposition to either state’s ballot measures, which Titus and Zietz say people with disabilities have expressed support for. Local press and anti-DEI national commentators have not criticized either proposal, signaling that, as once was the norm with the enactment of laws like the Americans with Disabilites Act, the push for disability rights can be bipartisan. Many Republican-leaning states, such as Alabama and Texas, do not have ableist language like “insane” in their state constitutions.

However, even within disability communities, there are breaks in support of language choice: the Nevada measure would switch its language on disability in the constitution to person-first language, as in “people who are autistic”—but there is growing support for identity-first language, as in “autistic people,” among disabled people.

The outcomes of both ballot measures come November could be indicative of how much public views on the harms of ableist language have changed. Back in 1998, Michigan voters were asked whether to change the word “handicapped” to “disabled” in its state constitution. The measure passed, but with less than 60 percent of the vote.

Sen. Titus told me that she hasn’t heard any real pushback, either, and believes that “the time has come for us to update our language for all disabilities.”