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ELIMINATING GENDERED LANGUAGE IN CITY CODES

Posted on 05/29/2024
The City Council approved a report from the Rules, Elections, and Intergovernmental Relations Committee requesting the City Attorney to work with city code publishers to revise the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) and the Los Angeles Administrative Code (LAAC) to remove specific references to gender and correct other identified non-substantive, technical errors.
 
The report requests the City Attorney to prepare an ordinance that will eliminate all gender-specific references, replacing them with the appropriate office or position titles. For example, the LAMC frequently refers to the mayor as “he,” which inaccurately presumes the Mayor's gender to be male. The proposed changes include replacing gender pronouns with the referenced subject, using gender-neutral pronouns, updating definitions, and correcting typographical errors.
 
This ordinance will be brought back to the Council for final approval. To read more about the report, click here.