Ohio bill passes house to delete “mental retardation” from state laws

A bill to delete the term “men­tal retar­da­tion” from state laws has been approved unan­i­mously in the Ohio House. The mea­sure replaces the phrase with the term “intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity” and would spec­ify that con­di­tion as a form of devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­ity. More than just chang­ing the term, the bill also would change the cri­te­ria how a per­son can be deter­mined to have a mod­er­ate level of intel­lec­tual dis­abil­ity, and be the sub­ject of insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion by a court order. The bill passed 95-to-zero. The bill now goes to the Ohio Sen­ate for their consideration.