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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | December 12, 2023 09:01 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Robert Leadbeter |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Age Dysphoria Legislation |
| In the near future, I intend to introduce legislation to define the term “age” under the Pennsylvania Statutory Construction Act as the number of years an individual has lived since birth. Discussions regarding the legal and societal definitions of age carry significant implications. Age-related issues commonly surface in legal contexts, including the age of consent; voting age; retirement age; and various age-based protections in employment, discrimination, and healthcare law. In the realm of criminal law, impositions of the death penalty and solitary confinement have been increasingly restricted by our courts due to emerging science concerning the age at which a person’s brain fully matures. In recent years, a growing number of people have championed a new approach to the law’s treatment of age that pays little heed to chronology. One approach – commonly referred to as “biological age” – proposes to measure an individual’s overall health and aging status as determined by various biological markers and the aging of an individual’s cells. Another approach involves the subjective measurement of one’s own age by gauging how old one “feels”. In 2018, an individual urged a Dutch court to adopt the latter approach in a petition to legally change his age from sixty-nine to forty-nine, claiming that he did not “feel” his current age and was in excellent physical condition. Remarkably, this man was willing to forfeit his pension as a 20-year reduction in his legal age would render him ineligible to continue receiving it. In its denial of the petition, the Dutch court noted that the relief sought by the petitioner posed “a variety of undesirable legal and societal implications.” To ensure uniformity, clarity, and fairness in our laws, it is necessary to reject these novel and dangerous approaches to the statutory treatment of age. As the definitions set forth in the Statutory Construction Act apply uniformly to all titles and statutes in Pennsylvania Law, my legislation will ensure that any statute’s usage of the term is unambiguous and applied consistently. Please join me in co-sponsoring this important piece of legislation to better protect our Commonwealth. |