Is it time for the Gendered Terms Modernization Amendment Act again?

This message was written to my Council Members—Ward 1’s Brianne Nadeau and At-Large Members Anita Bonds, Christina Henderson, Elissa Silverman, and Robert White—in March 2021. To my knowledge, the bill was not and never has been reintroduced. Perhaps it’s time to ask again….

Councilmembers,

As you may recall, early last year David Grosso introduced, and you and nearly every other Councilmember co-sponsored, the Gendered Terms Modernization Amendment Act of 2020, B23-0602, to “modernize the language throughout” the DC Code, specifically by removing unnecessarily gendered wording and substituting gender-neutral or non-gendered language instead. Unfortunately, the bill never made it out of committee.

I was reminded of this by a recent Twitter post noting that DC’s Home Rule Act, incongruously, “explicitly refers to every officeholder in DC as ‘he’”, despite the fact that even in 1968 DC had women on its appointed Council. I realize that, especially in the midst of oversight and budget season, there may be other priorities, but it made me wonder if this legislation might be reintroduced this year?

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@online{swiderski2026,
  author = {Swiderski, J. I.},
  title = {Is It Time for the {Gendered} {Terms} {Modernization}
    {Amendment} {Act} Again?},
  date = {2026-08-15},
  url = {https://jski.net/posts/GenderedTerms.html},
  langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

Swiderski, J. I. 2026. “Is It Time for the Gendered Terms Modernization Amendment Act Again?” August 15, 2026. https://jski.net/posts/GenderedTerms.html.