Fenway Health and other LGBTQ+ aging advocates commend the Massachusetts House and Senate for including language enumerating protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) older adults and older people living with HIV in long-term care facilities in recently passed legislation. The state legislature voted August 29, 2024 to approve “An Act to improve quality and oversight of long-term care” (House, No. 5033) and send it to Governor Healey’s desk to be signed into law. The LTC oversight legislation includes language from “An Act to establish an LGBTQI Long Term Care Facility Bill of Rights,” based on legislation (H.637 and S.381) introduced earlier this legislative session by Representative Jack Lewis (D-Framingham) and Senator Pat Jehlen (D- Somerville), Chair of the Senate Elder Affairs Committee and co-chair of the Massachusetts Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging.
The LGBTQI Long Term Care Bill of Rights enumerates what sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination in housing and public accommodations, mandated by state law, means for LGBTQI individuals in nursing homes and other LTC facilities, and what this means for older people with HIV. The legislation specifically addresses issues such as: admission, room assignment, use of restrooms, use or residents’ names and pronouns, clothing and cosmetics, free association, medical care, record-keeping, promulgation of policies within the facility, and training of staff to ensure that residents experience nondiscriminatory, affirming, and culturally responsive care.
“I vividly remember testimony at one of our LGBT Aging Commission hearings,” said Senator Jehlen. “A family in western Massachusetts could no longer care for their transgender aunt and could not find a single nursing home that would admit her. Finally, they found one. And that nursing home ironically put her in a converted closet.”
“LGBTQ+ seniors have spent their lives fighting for the social equality and legal protections that many of us now benefit from,” added Rep. Jack Patrick Lewis. “Many of them were pioneers is this struggle, losing partners and friends at the height of the AIDS epidemic, while also fighting for our very right to exist publicly and proudly in our families, our schools, our faith communities, and in our halls of government. The stories of LGBTQ+ seniors being forced back into the closet or mistreated in their golden years are simply unconscionable. I am grateful to House and Senate Leadership, along with all my legislative colleagues, for including this vital language that I worked on with Senator Jehlen in the final version of this bill.”
“As Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1996 landmark Romer v. Evans decision upholding sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws: ‘Enumeration is the essential device used to make the duty not to discriminate concrete and to provide guidance for those who must comply,’” said Sean Cahill, Director of Health Policy Research at the Fenway Institute and member of the Massachusetts Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging, who testified in favor of the legislation in May 2023. “This legislation will increase the likelihood that LGBTQI older adults and older people living with HIV can live in dignity and without fear in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in Massachusetts.”
In passing the LGBTQI Long Term Care Bill of Rights as part of the LTC oversight legislation, Massachusetts joins four states (California, New Jersey, New York, and Oregon) and the District of Columbia, which have similar LGBTQ Long Term Care Bills of Rights.
“Anyone who needs access to a long-term care facility should be welcomed with compassion and dignity,” said Chris Erchull, senior staff attorney at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and also a member of the LGBT Aging Commission. “This legislation will help ensure older adults across Massachusetts who are LGBTQ+ or who are living with HIV can access the care and support they need with safety and respect.”
“We also thank former House Elder Affairs Committee Chair Thomas Stanley (D-Waltham), the Conference Committee members, other legislative leaders, and other members of the Massachusetts Special Legislative Commission on LGBT Aging, including Michelle LaPointe and Alejandro Marcel, who helped make the case for this important legislation,” said Lisa Krinsky, Director of Fenway Health’s LGBTQIA+ Aging Project and a member of the LGBT Aging Commission. Krinsky testified in support of the legislation in May 2023.
Founded in 1971, Fenway Health advocates for and delivers innovative, equitable, accessible health care, supportive services, and transformative research and education. We center LGBTQIA+ people, BIPOC individuals, and other underserved communities to enable our local, national, and global neighbors to flourish.