In June 2026, a rumor spread online that New York lawmakers had passed a bill that replaces the terms "mother" and "father" with "gestating parent" and "non-gestating parent."
The far-right X account Libs of TikTok posted the claim alongside a photo of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and an apparent screenshot of a legal
The post further claimed that Hochul was set to sign the bill into law.
Several other X accounts relayed the rumor, with one saying the state was outlawing the terms "mother" and "father." Snopes readers also searched the website and emailed us seeking to confirm whether the claim was accurate.
The bill replacing gendered terminology for parents with non-gendered language in the state's Family Court Act passed the New York legislature on June 2, 2026. The legislation also seeks to change the words "paternity" and "filiation" to "parentage." As of this writing, the bill awaited Hochul's signature.
Contrary to some versions of the claim, the bill did not outlaw or ban the terms "mother" and "father." It simply broadens the legal definition of "parent" to those who may lack biological bonds to a child, such as adoptive and LGBTQ+ parents.
Under the updated text, "gestating parent" refers to a person who carries and gives birth to a child, while a "non-gestating parent" does not — such as the father or the non-carrying woman in a lesbian relationship. While parents share a legal bond with their children, they do not always share a biological one, as seen in cases of surrogacy or adoption. As we outline below, judges and magistrates advocating for the new language argue that these gender-neutral, descriptive phrases acknowledge diverse family situations.
New types of families
Apart from modernizing family law texts to account for same-sex parents (same-sex marriage has been legal in the state since 2011, and adoption by an unmarried same-sex couple has been possible since 2010), Senate Bill S9316 updates legal language to encompass situations made possible by the 2021 legalization of surrogacy in the state under the Child-Parent Security Act.
Surrogacy means that a child's legal parents may not be their biological parents. In these cases, establishing legal parentage must take a form other than a DNA "paternity" test, which only serves to prove a biological bond between a man and his child — traditionally known as "filiation."
To address this scenario, the new bill adopts a phrase that already exists in the CPSA — "acknowledgement of parentage" — to reflect that in many cases, paternity (whose root is the Latin word for "father") and biological bonds do not apply.
In all cases, the updated language acknowledges that unmarried non-biological parents in New York can already establish parentage if questions of custody or child support arise. The phrase "putative father" in the old version of the law would be changed to "alleged parent" under the new bill.
For example, the new language could apply to an unmarried woman whose partner gave birth to a child or to a single person who hires a surrogate to have a child.
New York judges and magistrates requested updates
The language updates follow the recommendations of a January 2025 report by the New York Family Court Advisory and Rules Committee, which is made up of judges and other magistrates. Based on practice, court decisions and suggestions from judges and lawyers, this committee recommends rules to improve proceedings and outcomes in family court.
The 2025 report included sections on "determining parentage" in court and substituting "gender-neutral parentage language for paternity and filiation in proceedings." After outlining how current New York state family law language is "archaic" and fails to include situations that family courts deal with regularly, the report says (Page 133):
Modernizing the terminology in the Family Court Act and other statutes is not simply a matter of semantics as overly narrow interpretations of family fail to fully meet children's best interests.
In other words, the judges and magistrates argue that New York's outdated family law language harms children because it does not reflect the reality of many modern families.
Other states in the U.S. have already updated their family law texts to reflect these new realities, including California, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
For further reading, Snopes confirmed Indiana Gov. Mike Braun declared June to be "Nuclear Family Month," defined as "one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children."