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By Greg deGiere, Civil Rights Advocate, The Arc California
The misleading legal terms “dependent adults” and “dependent persons” would be dropped from California law under a bill introduced last week by Assemblymember Mike Gipson and sponsored by The Arc & United Cerebral Palsy California Collaboration. AB 1906 would replace those terms with the simple, respectful terms “adults with disabilities” and “persons with disabilities.”
Many people with disabilities have objected to the existing terms for years. We’ve succeeded in recent years in adding the words “regardless of the fact they live independently” to the legal definitions, but the confusion has continued nonetheless.
“These (existing) terms can mislead law enforcement officers, social workers, and even crime victims and their families to think that many people with disabilities are excluded from the law’s protections,” the bill states.
In addition, “the (existing) term ‘elder and dependent adult abuse’ is cumbersome and often leads to the use of shorthand terms, including the misleadingly narrow ‘elder abuse’ or the misleadingly broad ‘adult abuse’,” it adds.
This is our second attempt to change these terms. We sponsored a similar bill in 2020. No opposition surfaced, but it and many other bills simply never came to a hearing and vote because of the pandemic disruptions.
We will keep you posted as AB 1906 (Gipson) l makes it’s way through the legislative process