Term “Mental Retardation” Changed to “Intellectual Disability” (K-12)

On October 5, 2010, President Obama signed federal legislation, titled “Rosa’s Law,” which replaced in federal law the terms “mental retardation” and “mentally retarded” with the terms “intellectual disability” and “individual with an intellectual disability.” Rosa’s Law also required that any regulation that used the old terms shall be considered to be referring to the new terms. However, this change in federal law did not replace the use of these terms in state law.