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Using a trans senior's birth name allows nursing home staff “to express an ideological disagreement" with a person's gender identity, one judge wrote.
(Photo courtesy of ca.gov)
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 transgender 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 doing so, the law banned employees from using the incorrect pronouns for trans residents, also known as misgendering them, or using their legal name, also known as deadnaming them.
That ban violates employees’ rights to free speech, the court ruled Friday.
“The law compels long-term care facility staff to alter the message they would prefer to convey,” the court reasoned, adding that the ban “burdens speech more than is required” to reach the state’s objective of eliminating discrimination including harassment on the basis of sex.
Referring to residents other than by their preferred gender “may be disrespectful, discourteous, and insulting,” Associate Justice Elena Duarte wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. But it can also be a way “to express an ideological disagreement with another person’s expressed gender identity.”
“The pronoun provision at issue here tests the limits of the government’s authority to restrict pure speech that, while potentially offensive or harassing to the listener, does not necessarily create a hostile environment,” she wrote, adding italics to “potentially” and “necessarily.”
This "ideological disagreement" that these workers are voicing simply has no merit. If they can't respect the residents as people, then they aren't qualified to work there.
While the primary function of any care facility is to provide housing and food/medical services to their residents, part of those roles is addressing each resident in the manner which they prefer to be addressed in, including their preferred pronouns.
calling someone by their preferred pronouns and name is so easy to do. i dont understand why people feel the need to invalidate others for no reason