BILL ANALYSIS Ó AB 1847 Page 1 CONCURRENCE IN SENATE AMENDMENTS AB 1847 (Chesbro) As Amended June 4, 2014 Majority vote ----------------------------------------------------------------- |ASSEMBLY: |76-0 |(May 19, 2014) |SENATE: |32-0 |(June 26, | | | | | | |2014) | ----------------------------------------------------------------- Original Committee Reference: JUD. SUMMARY : Deletes certain offensive and outdated terms once used to describe mental health conditions and disabilities in various California statutes (other than the Penal Code) and replaces them with more current, less offensive, terms. The Senate amendments make technical conforming amendments related to existing exemptions under the Public Records Act. EXISTING LAW uses dated and professionally rejected terms, such as "mentally defective," "mentally disordered," or "insane," throughout the several California codes. FISCAL EFFECT : None COMMENTS : This bill seeks to update various California code provisions (other than those in the Penal Code) in order to remove outdated and offensive terms once used to describe various kinds of mental and psychological conditions and replace them with more current, less offensive terms. The bill does not change terms in the Penal Code because, at criminal law, certain terms - such as insanity - still carry legal significance (especially in defenses to criminal prosecution) even though the term itself has been more or less abandoned by the professional community and, in many cases, the larger society. Part of the task of updating California code provisions was accomplished through prior legislation. For example, SB 1381 (Pavley), Chapter 457, Statutes of 2012, and AB 2370 (Mansoor), Chapter 448, Statutes of 2012, replaced references to "mental retardation" with "intellectual disability" and replaced "mentally retarded persons" and with "persons with an intellectual disability" or the "intellectually disabled." Similarly, AB 1640 (La Malfa), Chapter 31, Statutes of 2007, deleted the even older terms "idiot," "imbecility," and AB 1847 Page 2 "lunatics" from state code and replaced those terms with "persons who are mentally incapacitated." This bill is effectively a clean-up measure to those earlier efforts. Analysis Prepared by : Thomas Clark / JUD. / (916) 319-2334 FN: 0004047