It’s no secret that the state of elder care in the United States is disastrous. Nursing homes have long been under-staffed and under-resourced; the private-equity boom—to say nothing of the pandemic—has only made things worse. Here, Ann Neumann links this crisis with the specific concerns of aging LGBTQI+ people:
A rather quiet ongoing legal conflict in California is set to determine whether it is a crime for nursing home staff to intentionally and continuously deadname or misgender a trans elder. The California legislature passed a law known as SB 219 in 2017 prohibiting such discrimination, but it has not taken effect due to a lawsuit claiming to protect nursing home employees’ “freedom of expression”—at the explicit expense of residents’ rights.
The challenge is the work of Taking Offense, a shadowy advocacy group which self-describes as an “unincorporated association which includes at least one California citizen and taxpayer who has paid taxes to the state within the last year.” That’s practically all we know about Taking Offense, as well as the name and contact information of their lawyer, David Llewellyn Jr., who has declined to speak with any journalist I could find. (Llewellyn also did not return my call.)
With SB 219, the intent of the California legislature was to make it unlawful for long-term care staff to “willfully and repeatedly” refer to residents by names and pronouns they don’t identify with, and to assign, reassign, or refuse to assign rooms to transgender residents that don’t match their gender identity. Repeatedly calling a trans woman “Mr.,” for instance, would be a misdemeanor, and it would be illegal to put her in a room with men, with the possible penalty of 180 days in jail and a $2,500 fine. If implemented, the bill would strengthen and qualify existing nondiscrimination laws in the California Fair Employment and Housing Act.
The Taking Offense challenge is a “get off my lawn” screed and a willful misunderstanding of LGBTQ rights; it invites overzealous nursing home staff to pass judgement on their residents’ sense of self. The contempt in the group’s legal filing practically drips off the page. It complains a lot, at length, and randomly. One section declares that pronoun is not clearly defined, then goes on to list “different declensions” like “zie, zim, zir, zis, zieself.” The intention is to make the current moment’s search for how best to protect sex and gender minorities to be silly, a child’s game beneath the state court and state law, and certainly beneath the righteous, anonymous people behind Taking Offense.
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