Alabama’s Gulf of America Act took effect last week, making it state policy to use President Trump’s preferred term for the Gulf of Mexico.
House Bill 2 requires “all state and local entities and their employees” to “refer to the body of water that borders the coast of Alabama as the ‘Gulf of America,’” and to reflect this “terminology in all newly created maps, documents, educational materials, websites, official communications, and other resources.”
The page-and-a-half-long law has one exception for the public schools, colleges and universities it impacts: They can use Gulf of Mexico “for historical purposes” during instruction. Otherwise, the law doesn’t exempt Alabama faculty or other university employees, including reporters, from its restriction on what they can call this body of water.