The Administrative Code of the City of Los Angeles (LAAC) runs to four large volumes. The Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC) takes six. In their thousands of pages, these codes contain hundreds of instances that presume the gender of City officials and members of the public. Acting on a motion by City Council President Paul Krekorian, the City Attorney’s office identified “a substantial number of similar erroneous references to gender and other outdated gendered terms."
In a city where the Mayor, the City Attorney, half of the City Council, the Fire Chief, and numerous department heads are all women, this change is long overdue.
To fully realize the Council’s intent, the City Attorney’s office prepared revisions to both the LAMC and LAAC to remove specific references to gender. The Council has voted to implement the changes proposed by the City Attorney. Among other changes, the code will use the titles of given offices rather than gendered pronouns wherever possible, and will use ungendered terms such as “firefighters” and “police officers,” rather than “firemen” and policemen,” to refer to professions in both the public and the private sectors.
(L to R: Councilmembers Nithya Raman, Eunisses Hernandez, Heather Hutt, Traci Park and Katy Yaroslavsky are pictured here on their appointment to the Transportation Committee, the first all-female Council committee in in L.A. history. They joined Council President Krekorian in moving to update the City's municipal and administrative code.)