Equality Connecticut (EqCT), the statewide queer-led social justice organization, announced its legislative priorities for the 2026 short session today. The agenda was crafted with input from community members, educators, health care providers, and religious leaders from across the state. Matt Blinstrubas, EqCT’s executive director, said, “After a full year of repeated and vicious federal attacks …
Equality Connecticut (EqCT), the statewide queer-led social justice organization, announced its legislative priorities for the 2026 short session today. The agenda was crafted with input from community members, educators, health care providers, and religious leaders from across the state.
Matt Blinstrubas, EqCT’s executive director, said, “After a full year of repeated and vicious federal attacks on our community, we are laser-focused on what the state can do to strengthen protections and services for Connecticut’s LGBTQ+ people. Our state can and should be a leader in rebuffing the administration’s ambition to erase the gains we’ve made and the rights we have.”
EqCT’s priorities include bolstering gender-affirming care; expanding HIV health policy; safeguarding LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable students against school-based discrimination; and expanding access to reproductive care for LGBTQ+ people.
Gender Affirming Care
Equality Connecticut advocates strengthening the state’s shield law to protect medical professionals providing telehealth, removing individual providers’ names from prescriptions, and rebuffing the enforcement of other states’ anti-trans laws in Connecticut. EqCT also advocates prescription drug monitoring reform and increasing access to prescription hormone therapy.
HIV Policy
Equality Connecticut advocates exempting people with HIV from Medicaid work requirements created by the passage of the federal law H.R.1; and requiring commercial health insurers to allow providers to bill for long-acting injectables.
Education
Equality Connecticut advocates closing gaps in the local nondiscrimination policies that currently leave LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable students without clear, consistent safeguards against discrimination.
Reproductive Freedom for LGBTQ+ People
As part of the Fertility Access Connecticut (FACT) campaign, Equality Connecticut advocates expanding fertility health care coverage for LGBTQ and single people so that they may build their families.
LGBTQ Justice & Opportunity Network:
Equality Connecticut continues to champion the success and resourcing of the LGBTQ+ Justice & Opportunity Network. Specifically, we are supporting legislation to update its governance and membership eligibility.
The full legislative agenda can be accessed on Equality Connecticut’s website (LINK)
“At a moment when LGBTQ+ people are being targeted nationally, Connecticut has a clear choice,” Blinstrubas said. “We can retreat—or we can lead. These priorities reflect our commitment to building a state where LGBTQ+ people are safe, supported, and able to thrive, no matter what’s happening at the federal level. Equality Connecticut will keep organizing, advocating, and pushing until that promise is real for every community.”
