🇺🇸What does United States require?

Everyday topic

The United States constitution names no official language, and Congress has never passed a statute doing so. That blank stood for more than two centuries, until 6 March 2025, when an executive order titled "Designating English as the Official Language of the United States" was published in the Federal Register. The instrument was an executive order — not a constitutional amendment and not an act of Congress — and that is what makes this entry worth looking at: the same decision sits in the constitution in India and Indonesia, in a statute in Taiwan, and in a late executive proclamation in the United States. Different levels mean different ways of being undone: a constitutional clause takes an amendment, a statute takes Congress, an executive order can be revoked by the next president with a signature. It is also worth separating federal from state: while the federal level stayed blank, most states had long since designated English in their own constitutions or codes, so "does the United States have an official language" gets different answers at the two levels.