California Court Rules Nursing Home Employees Can Deadname Transgender Seniors

[Eugene]

Source: KQED

California Court Rules Nursing Home Employees Can Deadname Transgender Seniors

KQED News Staff and Wires
Jul 20

LGBTQ rights advocates said Monday that they will seek to challenge an appeals court decision tossing out part of a California law designed to protect older LGBTQ residents in nursing homes.

The 2017 law is intended to protect against discrimination or mistreatment based on residents' sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Third District Court of Appeal overturned the part of the law barring employees of long-term care facilities from willfully and repeatedly using anything other than residents' preferred names and pronouns.

In other words, it was illegal for employees to intentionally misgender trans residents by using the names and pronouns they were assigned at birth, a practice known as deadnaming.

The ban on deadnaming violates employees' rights to free speech, the court ruled Friday.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.kqed.org/news/11881770/california-court-rules-nursing-home-employees-can-deadname-transgender-seniors

[MLAA]

1. The way I read this is nursing home residents could have to pay to have employees

Commit hate crimes against them.

This is bullshit

[uriel1972]

2. Truly an abomination...

[Susan Calvin]

3. This should apply to everybody.

Every person should have the right to be addressed the way they wish to be addressed. How would those nursing home employees feel if a resident made up a name for them and then insisted on calling them that?

[Passenger]

4. What is not clear from this story ...

... is the exact nature of the provoking incident.

It's still bad law in any case, but there's still the question of continuity of medical records?

If only there were some sort of unique identifier. A number perhaps.

[Eugene]

5. The suit was filed by activists in an "unincorporated association" named Take Offense.

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener, who carried the law, said deliberately using the wrong name or pronoun is “straight up harassment” and “erases an individual’s fundamental humanity.”

Rick Chavez Zbur, executive director of Equality California, which bills itself as the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights organization, said using the wrong name and pronoun is “a hateful act that denies someone their dignity and truth” and can cause depression and even suicides.

Also, referral by gender identity was only part of it.

The appeals court upheld a second challenged portion of the law prohibiting facilities or employees from assigning rooms based on anything other than a transgender resident’s gender identity.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/nursing-homes-can-deadname-transgender-seniors-court-rules-rcna1468

Taking Offense asserts that trans rights are "special rights" that discriminate against non-transgender persons.

https://www.gaycitynews.com/california-court-strikes-misgendering-ban-from-ltc-residents-bill-of-rights/

[Passenger]

6. In a general way, is there a "right" of healthcare workers to insult patients? n/t