A.D. Lewis

The Project

Leveraging the expertise of Prison Law Office, A.D. (he/him/his and they/them/theirs) advocated alongside incarcerated and detained trans people with disabilities in jails and prisons to challenge harmful and discriminatory conditions of confinement.

Trans people (including transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary individuals) experience significant discrimination, mistreatment, and violence in California prisons, jails, immigration detention centers, and psychiatric facilities, including sexual and physical violence, solitary confinement, inadequate mental health and medical care, harassment, and denials of fundamental self-expression. These conditions make locked facilities uniquely disabling for trans people. They cause high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, and other mental health conditions, and exacerbate trans individuals’ existing mental health conditions. By focusing on marginalized and underserved trans people, this project will challenge the structural barriers that trans people with disabilities face when seeking justice, fair treatment, and adequate care.

Fellowship Highlights

During the two-year Fellowship, A.D.:

• Provided brief service, referrals, and legal advice to hundreds of individuals, including 297 in person visits, 26 video visits, 233 phone calls, 1228 letters, and 65 name and gender marker changes
• Distributed thousands of resources through interactions with clients
• Leveraged structured negotiations and litigation to secure strong protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in multiple County jail systems, including successfully advocating for one county to abolish discriminatory housing classifications and another County to eliminate harmful restrictive housing conditions
• Successfully advocated for policy changes in prisons and in jails to ensure access to gender affirming medical care, and for clients to access gender affirming care ranging from hormones to surgeries
• Testified to the State Legislature about conditions of confinement in county jails
• Developed Know Your Rights resources
• Supervised law students at Stanford’s TGI Pro Bono Project and EBCLC / Berkeley Law’s Name and Gender Marker Change Clinic to expand the Fellowship’s reach

Next Steps

A.D. will continue to advocate for incarcerated trans people at the Prison Law Office. He will expand the project to develop nation-wide self-advocacy tools for incarcerated individuals and advocates. He will leverage existing class actions to advocate for improved outcomes for individuals seeking gender affirming care.

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