Three Republican state senators are pressing Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto a bill passed by her fellow Democrats that would strip the words "mother" and "father" from sections of New York family court, domestic, and education law, replacing them with "gestating parent" and "non-gestating parent."
The letter, obtained by the New York Post ahead of Father's Day, came from state Sens. Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick of Nassau, Bill Weber of Rockland, and Alexis Weik of Suffolk. It appeals directly to Hochul as "a mother and grandmother" and asks her to block a measure the senators call dehumanizing and pointless.
Hochul's office has signaled she will sign the bill. Her press account on X dismissed the criticism in blunt terms earlier this month, writing: "Mothers are mothers and fathers are fathers. No legislation changes that." The same post accused Republicans of "manufacturing bulls***" to distract from their own policies.
The legislation, sponsored by state Sen. Luis Sepulveda, a Bronx Democrat, and Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, a Westchester Democrat, passed at the end of the legislative session in May with what the Post described as "little discussion." The bill would replace "mother" with "gestating parent" and "father" with "non-gestating parent" or simply "parent" across relevant sections of state law. It would also rebrand "paternity" proceedings as "parentage proceedings" and swap out "putative fathers" for "an alleged parent."
The sponsors have said the bill is necessary to clarify parts of Family Court Law dealing with surrogacy in cases of same-sex marriages. Neither Sepulveda nor Paulin was quoted directly in the Post's reporting.
Some Democrats voted against the measure in the legislature, though the exact number has not been reported.
The letter from the three GOP senators does not hold back. It frames the language changes as an ideological exercise with no legal necessity, and it targets the specific term "non-gestating parent" as an affront to fathers on the eve of a holiday meant to honor them.
The senators wrote:
"To even consider replacing the term 'father' with 'non-gestating parent' diminishes the role that so many fathers play in their children's lives."
They pressed Hochul on personal grounds as well, noting her own family role. From the letter:
"The first word out of a child's mouth is often 'mom' or 'dad'. As a mother and grandmother, you should understand the unique and indispensable role mothers play in our families and communities."
The senators also took aim at the treatment of women under the bill's language. "They are women who work and provide for their children, and they are the core of any family," the letter states. It goes on to call the term "gestating parent" what it plainly is, a reduction of motherhood to a biological function.
"Relegating mothers to the term 'gestating parent' is extremely offensive and dehumanizing and serves no purpose beyond virtue signaling."
At the same time, the letter acknowledges that targeted legal adjustments could serve a legitimate purpose. The senators wrote that "by adjusting language in the law, not only it is possible to make it more inclusive, but it also determines the utilization of a term which encompasses a broader concept of parental care, not one strictly related to 'fatherhood.'" In other words, the Republicans are not opposed to updating surrogacy-related provisions. They object to wholesale erasure of "mother" and "father" from the statute books.
The governor's response creates its own tension. Her office posted on X that "mothers are mothers and fathers are fathers" and that "no legislation changes that." Read plainly, that statement agrees with the Republican premise: the words matter, and a bill cannot redefine parenthood. Yet Hochul has signaled she will sign the very bill that attempts to do exactly that.
If the legislation truly changes nothing, as her office claims, then why pass it? And if it does change something, the legal vocabulary New York courts use to describe parents, then the governor's reassurance rings hollow. You cannot simultaneously insist that mothers and fathers remain mothers and fathers while endorsing a law that scrubs those words from the code.
Republican lawmakers across the country have increasingly used legislative tools to challenge what they view as ideological overreach by Democratic state governments. In Congress, GOP leaders have tied policy demands to must-pass legislation as a way to force accountability on issues they believe the majority party is trying to rush through without public debate.
The New York bill fits that pattern. It passed at the tail end of the session in May, when the legislative calendar is crowded and public attention is thin. The Post described it as having moved forward "with little discussion", a detail that reinforces the Republican senators' complaint that the measure was never seriously debated on its merits.
New York families dealing with the state's family court system face real problems: backlogs, custody disputes, and a bureaucracy that can grind slowly even in urgent cases. Whether renaming "paternity proceedings" as "parentage proceedings" addresses any of those problems is a question the bill's sponsors have not answered publicly, at least not in any quoted statement.
What the bill does accomplish is a symbolic rewrite. It signals that Albany's Democratic majority views the traditional vocabulary of family law as outdated or exclusionary. That may play well in certain political circles. It is harder to see how it helps a father fighting for custody in a Bronx courtroom, or a mother navigating surrogacy law in Suffolk County.
The broader pattern of Republican officials using formal procedural channels to challenge Democratic institutional decisions is not limited to New York. But the stakes here are distinctly personal. Language in family law is not abstract. It appears in court orders, birth certificates, and custody agreements. It shapes how the state addresses the people raising children.
Hochul has until the end of the year to sign or veto the bill. That timeline gives her room to let the controversy cool, or to quietly sign the measure when fewer people are paying attention.
The Republican senators clearly hope their letter, timed to Father's Day, forces a public reckoning before that happens. Whether Hochul feels any political pressure from three members of a minority caucus is another matter. But the letter's appeal is aimed over her head, at voters who still call themselves Mom and Dad and see no reason the state should call them anything else.
Democrats who voted against the bill in the legislature, however many there were, evidently saw the political risk. Legislative battles in which the minority party highlights overreach by the majority tend to resonate most when the underlying issue is easy for ordinary people to understand. And few issues are simpler to grasp than whether the government should call your mother a "gestating parent."
The bill's sponsors say it clarifies surrogacy law for same-sex couples. If that is the genuine goal, a narrowly tailored fix, one that adds inclusive language to surrogacy-specific provisions without erasing "mother" and "father" everywhere else, would accomplish it without the political firestorm. The Republican senators' letter concedes as much.
But a narrow fix would not send the broader cultural message. And that message, not legal clarity, appears to be the point. When a legislature replaces "mother" with "gestating parent" across entire chapters of law, it is making a statement about which vocabulary the state considers acceptable. Parents who find that vocabulary cold and clinical are not confused. They understand exactly what is being said, and what is being taken away.
Republican officials at both the state and federal level have grown more willing to use formal institutional tools to push back against what they see as ideological projects dressed up as routine governance. The veto letter from three New York senators may not carry the force of a congressional impeachment resolution, but it speaks to the same instinct: make the majority own its choices in plain view.
Hochul can sign the bill, veto it, or let it sit. What she cannot do, despite her office's attempt on social media, is sign it and pretend it changes nothing.
When the state decides "mother" is a word the law no longer needs, that is not a clerical update. It is a choice. And voters deserve to know who made it.