Elderly Illinois woman allegedly abused for being gay can sue retirement home

[Borealis]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/28/illinois-woman-allegedly-assaulted-for-being-gay-can-sue-retirement-home-for-failing-to-stop-abuse/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cb89d835ee4b

After her partner of 30 years died, Marsha Wetzel didn’t have many choices besides moving to a retirement home. A social worker found her a spot at Glen St. Andrew Living
Community in Niles, Ill., a retirement home and assisted living facility.

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss her lawsuit against the retirement home. Hailed as a victory by housing
rights and LGBT advocates, the three-judge panel’s decision said that landlords can be held liable for discrimination if they fail to respond to harassment faced by tenants who belong
to a protected class.

The problems started after another resident discovered she had a son and asked where her husband was, she says in the Lambda Legal video. When she told the woman that she had n
ever had one, the woman assumed that she was a single mother.

“I said, ‘No, I had a partner, my partner was a woman, and we raised a son,’ ” she recalled. “It got out, and I thought, oh, no, here we go again. Gay hate.” One resident, a former police
officer, told her that if she had sex with a man, she would never want a woman again, she alleges. Wetzel complained to staff at the nursing home, and the harassment seemed to
decrease.

Then, months later, the man addressed her with a homophobic slur and rammed her scooter with his walker, “hard enough to tip her chair and knock her off the ramp,” the lawsuit
alleges. Wetzel claims that she reported the incident but was told not to worry about it. When the harassment increased and she continued to complain, she was told by nursing home
staff that she was a troublemaker who couldn’t be trusted, she alleges.

The man later allegedly threatened, in crude terms, to rip her breasts off, commented that it was great that gay people had been killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, and
told her, “Judy died to get away from you.” Another woman allegedly told her she looked like a man, and that gay people would burn in hell.

The lawsuit also accuses administrators at Glen St. Andrew of retaliating against Wetzel. She claims that she was temporarily banned from spending time in the lobby unless she was
getting coffee, given a less desirable seating assignment in the dining hall, falsely accused of smoking in her room and taunted because she didn’t have visitors on Christmas. Staff
told her that she was lying and stopped cleaning her room at one point, she alleges.

The appeals court ruling did not assess the validity of the claims that Wetzel makes in her lawsuit. The decision allows the case to proceed in the district court. In a statement,
representatives for Glen St. Andrew said that they strongly deny the factual allegations in the complaint and will present their side of the story in court.

The ruling comes at a time when finding LGBT-friendly senior housing has become an increasingly urgent task for members of the “Stonewall generation,” who fought for equal rights
and protections in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall uprising and now face the possibility of being the first openly gay people in their nursing homes.