The population of the US is rapidly aging, at the same time as more people understand themselves to be transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming. Are our legal systems and long-term care systems prepared to welcome and provide person-centered care to transgender and nonbinary people as we age? This workshop shares knowledge about aging in the transgender and nonbinary community, and surfaces questions about transgender and nonbinary people’s lived experience that may not be reflected in the way legal services are currently provided across the lifespan.
We will have a transgender attorney of color ground our discussion by speaking about his lived experience as a formative lawyer in the movement for transgender justice. In thinking about planning for aging and anticipating some of these challenges, a transgender trusts and estates attorney will share her legal approach to providing legal advice to transgender and nonbinary people. We will then highlight a new resource with specific durable healthcare power of attorney provisions to protect trans and nonbinary people’s access to hormone replacement therapy and use of affirmed name, gender, and pronouns. We will look at new research about health disparities for transgender people of color related to Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) and offer a new tool for transgender and nonbinary people to evaluate the policies of long-term residential care facilities toward transgender people.
We will close with a cautionary look ahead at efforts to use free speech arguments to limit protections for transgender people in residential care, such as the right to be addressed by their name and gender. Workshop participants will have a deeper understanding of how traditional aging supports, including the law, may be problematized for people of transgender and nonbinary experience, and how dementia may compound those barriers, particularly for Black and brown people who are gender minorities. Through interactive discussion, participants will be encouraged to surface questions that they may have about trans and nonbinary people’s experiences in long-term care. Trans and nonbinary participants will be encouraged to share concerns raised by their lived experience, in order to help all lawyers provide advice to help trans and nonbinary clients make the best and safest choices possible.