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“I see you and I want to help.”
This is how Kristen Matha, the project director of Indiana Legal Services, Inc. LGBT Project, approaches client service. Meeting clients with a culturally competent and trauma-informed approach is at the forefront of serving the LGBTQ+ community, which is what Matha and her team strive to do while inspiring and educating others to do the same.
Why is the Project needed? According to the 2023 UCLA School of Law Williams Institute report, around 23% of LGBTQ+ people and a staggering 35% of transgender adults were living in poverty in the United States in 2020 compared to 16% of their straight and cisgender counterparts. While these numbers are improving, the community still faces challenges.
Members of the community experience disproportionate rates of violence and harassment while doing everyday tasks like showing one’s driver’s license to enter an establishment or seeking health care. The FBI’s 2022 Annual Crime Report showed a 32.9% increase in reported hate crimes based on gender identity.
This is where the Project comes in. Started in 2016, the Project has established itself alongside and among community partners like the Eskenazi Transgender Health and Wellness Clinic.
Such partnerships are reflective of the intersectional nature of low-income community members’ legal obstacles. For example, the legal right to obtain gender-affirming care is one thing, while finding a medical professional to provide that care is another.
The Project takes 15-20 clients a week and is currently seeking a staff attorney to grow the team. She is optimistic about the future of the Project based on support shown by fellow Hoosiers. And there is plenty of room for volunteers.
The Project prioritizes three areas of legal service: gender marker and name changes; gender-affirming healthcare access and insurance denials; and bullying in publicly funded K-12 schools. Having proper identification documents that match one’s presentation is often the lynchpin to accessing other basic social determinants of health, like housing, benefits and the ability to travel.
For some of those other legal needs, the Project can refer clients to other divisions within ILS or to outside attorneys, both of which are additional ways the private bar can serve the community.
The Project provides everything from self-help forms to full-scope representation. Volunteer opportunities exist across that spectrum.
Matha is seeking support from local firms to host gender marker and name change clinics, which are one-day clinics where firm and ILS attorneys alongside supervised professional staff assist walk-in clients with form preparation.
Virtual substantive and cultural awareness trainings are offered in advance of clinics. If any volunteers elect to represent a client who needs additional assistance at the petition hearing, the Project will provide training for that, too. For early career attorneys, this is a great way to gain courtroom experience in a relatively predictable context.
If arranging a clinic is not feasible, other opportunities abound. Practitioners who have experience in areas where additional services are often needed–employment, public benefits, family, trusts and estates, housing, and education law, for example–can take on direct clients in those areas.
Paralegals and staff skilled at navigating processes also have a critical role to play. After prevailing on a gender marker and name change petition, clients must navigate a bureaucratic morass to update their driver’s license, social security card, birth certificate and all other aspects of society dependent on those documents.
The Project is in particular need of rural volunteers to represent clients in obtaining identification documents that match their identity. Indiana county judiciaries vary widely on whether they will grant gender marker changes, and the Indiana Supreme Court has so far declined opportunities to resolve that divide.
Sound daunting? Matha encourages interested individuals to start by increasing their social awareness. The basic tenet of this is recognizing that members of the LGBTQ+ community may fear they will not be treated with respect and dignity. Volunteers must work to establish trust from the jump.
Leading with respect is something everyone can do. From there, allies should combat misinformation through self- and community education. Matha warns that “there is a significant amount of discourse that is fraught with misinformation on transgender folks. This misinformation is intended to create a climate of fear and erasure and we all have to combat that.”
Allies and community members alike struggle to follow what new anti-transgender laws, particularly national and state legislation, are in effect versus what was proposed but disregarded. “There is a chilling effect from simply introducing this legislation,” Matha reflects. There is likely a far greater need in Indiana than the LGBT Project is able to track due to members of the LGBTQ+ community being unaware of their rights or the resources available.
Interested in getting involved? Check out @indianalegalservices on Instagram, visit indianalegalservices.org, or email the Project at [email protected].
“The need is great and the contributions of the private bar are impactful” – Kristen Matha•
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Molly Madden and Cassidy Segura Clouse are associates in Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath’s Indianapolis office. Opinions expressed are those of the authors.
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