The Proskauer social responsibility and pro bono blog
Proskauer is excited to announce a partnership with the Schools Consent Project (SCP) for a new pro bono collaboration in our London and New York offices.
SCP aims to normalise conversations about consent to encourage safe, healthy interactions and reduce the likelihood of young people experiencing or perpetrating sexual harm.
Six months after implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”),¹ many charitable organizations are still struggling with compliance. Our pro bono clients frequently ask whether consent is now required to send solicitations or communications via email to donors or potential donors. Before addressing that discrete question, here are some key GDPR principles that apply to non-profit organizations:
What is personal data? Personal data encompasses any information that may directly or indirectly identify an individual (for example, a name is a direct identifying element, while a date of birth, email address, phone number, home address, or photo is an indirect identifying element).² Personal data also includes information about the characteristics of an individual (hobbies for instance), opinions of a person, and online identifiers (cookies, IP address). Because the definition of personal data is so broad, all charitable organizations process personal data.
What is data processing?³ Processing is defined very broadly in the GDPR and includes the collection, recording, storage, adaptation, use, erasure, and mere consultation of personal data.
Today, an increasing number of medical practitioners are recognizing the importance of providing appropriate, non-discriminatory, and patient-centered health care to people born with intersex traits. “Intersex” is an umbrella term used to describe a wide range of inborn variations in sex characteristics that do not seem to fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. Considered a sex and gender minority by the National Institutes of Health, between 0.05 percent and 1.7 percent of the population is born with intersex traits.
Care of intersex individuals, particularly children, demands special attention to avoid biases based on outdated understandings of sex and gender. To assist hospitals in offering intersex-affirming health care, pro bono attorneys at Proskauer teamed up with nonprofit legal organizations interACT: Advocates for Intersex Youth and Lambda Legal to create an educational policy guide designed to better educate hospitals about the unique needs of intersex patients and address the bias and insensitivity intersex patients and their families all too often face in a health care setting.
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