Advocating for Aging Residents

Andrea understands that we owe our elders more than just our respect – we owe them an opportunity to live long and healthy lives in their communities, free from the hardship caused by scams, fraud, and unequal access to health care. Age-based discrimination, elder neglect and abuse, and scams and frauds occur every day. Our aging residents will have an advocate with Andrea in the Attorney General’s Office. 

As Attorney General, she will establish an Elder Justice Unit. Though the Attorney General’s Office currently has an Elder Hotline and dedicated staff available to answer questions and connect residents with resources, more can and should be done to promote the safety and security of older residents. The Elder Justice Unit will blend resources from the Attorney General’s Criminal and Public Protection & Advocacy Bureaus to work together with other stakeholders to focus on:

• Civil and criminal enforcement actions against those who try to cheat our elders, including predatory practices and scams.
• State and federal legislative action to combat the abuse or exploitation of elder residents.
• Education and training materials to help prevent and address elder fraud or neglect, and provide answers and resources.
• Increasing oversight and prosecution of housing and health care providers that discriminate against the elderly, especially those in underserved communities of color and those who are reliant on Medicare or MassHealth. 

Championing Immigrant Communities

Andrea believes that all residents of the Commonwealth, regardless of immigration status, are entitled to protection under the law and she pledges to prioritize using the resources of the Attorney General’s Office to support our immigrant communities and to address discrimination, and the practices of unscrupulous employers, predatory businesses, and irresponsible landlords that target and harm members of our immigrant communities.

As Attorney General, Andrea will:

• Make sure the AGO’s staff, including attorneys, reflect the ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity of the Commonwealth so that people can feel confident that those enforcing our laws are connected to the people the office serves.
• Build on existing partnerships with immigrant advocacy organizations and community organizations across the state to improve the AGO’s ability to address the issues most affecting immigrants in the state.
• Ensure that local law enforcement agencies are not collaborating or sharing information with ICE.
• Use the power of the Office to advocate against unnecessary immigration detention that tears families apart.
• Enforce our anti-discrimination laws to address hate and harassment directed at immigrants and immigrant communities, including in housing and employment.
• Protect undocumented immigrants from abuse and fraud by prioritizing growing the AGO’s language capacity to allow attorneys and staff to listen and address scams that are being perpetrated in languages other than English.
• Ensure that immigrant children have equal access to education regardless of their immigration status.
• Work with state and local partners to make sure our immigrant communities can access not just the AGO, but all levels of government equally and without fear.
• Support the provision of driver’s licenses to all eligible residents of the Commonwealth, including those without documented legal status. 

Combating the Opioid and Illegal Drug Crisis

This issue is personal for Andrea, who grew up down the street from the epicenter of Boston’s opioid crisis. But Andrea knows this crisis touches nearly every corner of the Commonwealth, and requires a regional response with a whole host of stakeholders, including those with lived experience, at the table. When it comes to this response, Andrea is committed to looking at more than opioids because she knows that it’s illegal drugs harming communities, and all too often, harming our communities of color.

As Attorney General, Andrea will:

• Continue to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable for marketing and profiting from addictive prescription opioids. 
• Use the platform and powers of the Attorney General’s office to promote and enforce safe prescribing and dispensing practices for opioids.
• Ensure that everyone impacted by the crisis has equitable and fair access to the substance use disorder treatment they need, and deserve, and are entitled to by law.
• Enforce existing law that requires MassHealth providers to accept payments from MassHealth as full payment for substance use treatment services.  
• Work with federal and local law enforcement partners to stop the trafficking of illegal opioids such as fentanyl.

Commitment to the LGBTQIA+ Community

Andrea has been and will continue to be a strong advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community. She has dedicated her life and career to fighting discrimination in all forms, and will work to ensure that Massachusetts remains a welcoming and safe place for its LGBTQIA+ residents as Attorney General by:

• Using the powers of the Attorney General’s office, including the Civil Rights division, to combat discrimination based on someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.
• Naming a liaison to the LGBTQIA+ community so that it has a direct line to her office.
• While other states are taking steps to restrict the rights of transgender individuals, Andrea is committed to shielding them from hatred in all its forms. She will protect transgender individuals from discrimination in all areas, including public accommodations, housing, education, health care (including gender-affirming care), and employment.
• Ensuring that LGBTQIA+ youth know that they are loved and supported by the Attorney General’s Office. Andrea will guarantee that our schools are safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ youth.

Defending and Expanding Reproductive Justice

Reproductive justice and comprehensive sex education intersects with all aspects of a healthy and equitable society. Now more than ever Massachusetts needs elected officials who will protect and defend reproductive rights, as well as broaden the conversation around reproductive justice and access to critical healthcare services. 

Andrea’s commitment to reproductive justice has deep roots. As a Boston City Councilor, Andrea was a steadfast advocate at the state level calling on the Legislature and the Governor to protect and enforce the provisions of the ROE Act to make abortion care and family planning services accessible and make reproductive healthcare, including contraceptive care, affordable and equitable for all Boston residents. 

As Attorney General, Andrea will ensure Massachusetts continues to take the lead and fight for reproductive justice.

Andrea will:

• Protect and enforce legal abortion in Massachusetts, including the provisions of the ROE Act.
• Expand the conversation around reproductive justice to include and uplift disparities in maternal health, especially around Black and brown communities. This would include working to ensure that all eligible women and people who menstruate have continuous MassHealth coverage to include the entire 21-month period from the beginning of pregnancy to a year after delivery. That coverage includes doula services for prenatal care, labor and delivery, and postpartum care; in-home postpartum visits with newborn care services; postpartum depression screening and treatment; infant feeding support; and, screening and support for preventable high-risk pregnancies, and more. 
• Close the gap on abortion deserts across western and southeastern parts of the state, including for college students. While abortion care is legal in Massachusetts, it is not accessible for many residents and especially college students. These barriers very much still exist, the biggest one being insurance coverage and MassHealth. That is inexcusable if we want Massachusetts to lead the way on reproductive justice. 
• Expose Crisis Pregnancy Centers that intentionally provide medically inaccurate and dangerous information to those experiencing pregnancy. 
• Protect our providers of essential health care like abortion and gender affirming care, fighting for access to these services for our most vulnerable communities, and ensuring that Massachusetts remains a beacon in the fight for reproductive justice.
• Create a cross-bureau reproductive justice unit within the Attorney General’s Office, including the Office’s civil rights division, health care division, criminal bureau and government bureau to protect abortion providers and funds from out of state consequences, enforce data privacy laws, develop new ways to hold crisis pregnancy centers accountable, and defend our laws from legal challenges that may originate in and out of state.
• Support the state’s Common Start Bill (H.605/S.362) and partner with the legislature to ensure this critical bill that recognizes childcare as a societal good is passed into law. Andrea believes we cannot stop advocating for reproductive and maternal health once a child is born. Childcare that is accessible, affordable and high-quality significantly impacts the mental and physical health of all women.
• Partner with community organizations and neighborhood health centers to ensure the needs of those in underserved communities are identified and addressed. 
• Advocate for expanding access to telehealth for more medical services including insurance coverage. 
• Work with community organizations, law firms, legal advocates, leveraging public/private partnerships, to ensure patients and providers have access to legal advice.

Ensuring Access to Affordable Healthcare

Every family, worker, and resident should have access to affordable health care – no matter who you are or where you live. It’s staggering to think that Massachusetts has some of the best hospitals in the country, while also some of the greatest disparities in health care. Andrea will tackle health inequities head on, ensuring everyone, especially our communities of color and poor, rural communities, have access to high quality, affordable, culturally competent, gender affirming care including mental health care. 

As Attorney General, Andrea will:

• Protect coverage under the Affordable Care Act and our universal coverage law.
• Hold those who unlawfully profit off the sick fully accountable and require them to return any stolen dollars to their rightful owners.
• Urge colleges and medical schools to report the recruiting, supporting, and graduating of Black and brown nurses and doctors and advocate for the use of funds that the Attorney General’s Office recovers from health care cases to support scholarships and other programs to make sure this occurs. The data is clear that the best way to better health outcomes for Black and brown residents is to ensure that they are being treated by professionals who look like them.
• Advocate for continuum of care and support more integrated care for our most vulnerable residents, who suffer not just from a specific illness, but also from a vicious cycle of poverty. Andrea will push for programs that help those people who are most vulnerable, and also address the underlying living conditions that are making people sick, including air and water contaminated by environmental pollutants and inadequate access to fresh foods in “food deserts.” 
• Work with partners at the state to deepen the conversation and address Black maternal health disparities while also working to address maternal health disparities in our poor rural communities.
• Protect our providers of essential health care services like abortion and gender affirming care, fighting for access to these services for our most vulnerable communities, and ensuring that Massachusetts remains a beacon in the fight for reproductive justice.

Equal Access to Quality Education

As the product of five public schools, Andrea’s life exemplifies the transformative power of education. She knows that equitable access to education can break cycles of poverty, incarceration, and crime, open the doors of opportunity, and change lives. She believes that the Attorney General must play a vital role in ensuring that every student is given the opportunity and learning environment to succeed and thrive.

As Attorney General, Andrea will:

• Fight to ensure that all students have access to high-quality public education regardless of geography or income.
• Work with Executive Branch partners to make sure we meet each child where they are, ensuring that schools are equipped with mental health and other public benefit resources to which qualifying students are entitled by law.
• Affirm the existing Attorney General advisory confirming that state and federal laws demand equal access to public education regardless of race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or immigration status, and hold every school system that is not meeting these requirements accountable.
• Engage with teachers, students, and families through advisories, initiatives and technical assistance to ensure that schools foster healthy and safe learning environments for our kids.
• Take on the school-to-prison pipeline by investigating the over-policing of kids, including kids of color.
• Ensure that Massachusetts public and private higher education institutions provide safe campus environments by complying with the Campus Sexual Violence Act, the state’s version of Title IX, which is the federal law requiring institutions to prevent, report, and address incidents of sexual assault and other forms of sexual violence.
• Combat predatory student loan practices that lead to burdensome debt and destroy the credit ratings of individuals and families.
• Ensure that immigrant children have equal access to education regardless of their immigration status.

Fighting for Environmental Justice

Combating the climate crisis and protecting the environment are top priorities for Andrea, and she will fight for environmental justice across the state. Every resident deserves the opportunity to live in a healthy and safe community, especially those in poor, rural communities and communities of color who suffer the worst environmental devastation and are disproportionately harmed by pollution. 

As Attorney General, Andrea will ensure that Massachusetts is climate resilient, and that no community endures a disproportionate share of environmental pollution and corresponding health impacts.

She will use the law enforcement powers of the Attorney General’s Office to:

• Ensure that all residents breathe clean air and drink clean water, including addressing the detrimental effects of PFAS.
• Prevent and penalize illegal releases of contaminants into communities already disproportionately saddled with pollution.
• Staunchly enforce Massachusetts’ historic roadmap legislation and environmental land use planning laws.
• Challenge industry actions that mislead Massachusetts consumers and investors about the risks of climate change.
• Promote renewable energy choices.
• Intentionally engage communities of color, rural communities and low-income communities to ensure participation in developing climate policies. 
• Incentivize communities to develop green spaces and become more climate resilient using settlement awards and damages verdicts.

Protecting Consumers

Massachusetts’ consumer protection laws are second to none, providing tools for business regulation and enforcement that allow the Attorney General to level the playing field for consumers facing marketplace abuse. Andrea will leverage the legal tools of the Attorney General’s office to protect consumers from abusive practices in a wide range of industries.

Andrea will:

• Ensure protections reflect current marketing practices, including abusive and misleading internet advertisements, misleading software applications and payment processing abuses.
• Address recently developed industries, including app-based services, to make sure that both consumers and workers are properly protected by reasonable payment terms and adequate privacy safeguards.
• Evaluate current disclosure requirements intended to protect consumers to make sure that necessary information about cost of cancellation and payment programs is prominently, accurately, and timely disclosed.
• Investigate banks and mortgage companies when reported data shows that they are failing to do business based on race, sexuality, gender or religion.

Protecting Your Right to Safe, Affordable Housing

Housing affordability and homeownership are critical building blocks that allow families to thrive and workers to pursue opportunity, but for too many this is out of reach. Families have no choice but to live in uninhabitable, unsanitary apartments causing residents to suffer illnesses and fear for their children’s safety. Andrea grew up in public housing and has long championed affordable housing and community development. 

As a Boston City Councilor, her first act was to sponsor, fight for, and ultimately approve the Community Preservation Act, which has helped generate over $20 million annually for affordable housing, historic preservation, and open space in Boston. Andrea will continue these efforts as your Attorney General and fight to ensure everyone has access to safe, healthy and affordable housing in a community that they choose.

As Attorney General, Andrea will: 

• Promote increased development of housing that is affordable, accessible, and meets the needs of residents, including those with disabilities, in recovery, and supportive housing.
• Hold landlords and property management companies responsible for providing safe, clean, accessible living conditions to all residents.
• Fight housing discrimination by enforcing and strengthening existing state fair housing laws, including making sure that people who use rental assistance programs, like RAFT and Section 8, are able to access suitable housing and to stay in their homes during challenging times.
• Investigate digital redlining by pursuing tech companies that sell discriminatory products in Massachusetts that unlawfully exclude people from housing.
• Protect homeowners by holding bad actors accountable, preventing predatory lending, and protecting residents against unlawful foreclosures.
• Stand up for renters by making sure tenants know their rights and protecting renters from unlawful evictions.
• Strengthen communities by revitalizing blighted and abandoned properties.
• Think creatively about new ways to make Massachusetts more livable and affordable. 
• Utilize the Attorney General’s authority to review zoning by-laws to ensure they promote thriving, diverse communities.

Reaffirming Faith in a True Justice System

Andrea is the only candidate in the field with a strong, legislative track record on criminal justice reform and community policing. 

As Boston City Councilor, she worked with partners at the State House, including Governor Baker, to secure line-item funding for investments in community policing. She established the first-ever system of civilian oversight over the Boston Police Department, ultimately establishing an Office of Police Accountability and Transparency in the City of Boston. Andrea led efforts to adopt the use of police body-worn cameras and spearheaded the fight to increase diversity in Boston’s public safety agencies.

She has made real, tangible reform in the areas of criminal justice and police reform, and will continue these efforts as Attorney General to reaffirm faith in a true justice system.

Andrea will: 

• Call for the formation of a Police Accountability Unit within the Civil Rights Division to support and ensure public trust and confidence in local law, including through the development of community and law enforcement partnership and through pattern or practice investigations where law enforcement practices appear racially biased.
• Continue to hold our public safety agencies accountable, leveraging the powers of the AG’s office to push for greater transparency and diversity.
• Push for reforms that will not only make our criminal justice system more equitable, but also keep people safe in our communities.
• Ensure our policies and actions are driven by transparency, accountability, data and equity.  This is what Andrea did when she chaired the Boston City Council’s committee on public safety and criminal justice and worked to assure that city funded violence reduction programs report outcomes and that the Boston police increase transparency and diversity.  
• Support ending sentences of life without the possibility of parole and oppose the death penalty.
• Eliminate disproportionate policing and incarceration of people of color.  
• Allocate resources to assure that criminal justice policy in the Commonwealth is driven by data and evidence while working with the Governor and Legislature to assure that we accelerate efforts to improve data collection. We must understand, for example, where our policies have a racially disparate impact and cannot fund programs that do not work. 
• Stand firm in her position to end qualified immunity for police officers. Andrea believes no one is above the law, and has been on the record to end qualified immunity since her time as a Boston City Councilor.
• Treat violent crime first as a public health problem by seeking to address its root causes and inextricable link to poverty, trauma, and discrimination. At the same time, Andrea will not hesitate to pursue prosecution and incarceration where necessary, while protecting the rights of victims and striving for equity and restorative justice.
• Use her legal authority and public platform to ensure that state and municipal public safety officials reflect the diversity of the communities they serve. 
• Focus her enforcement resources on those areas where the Attorney General  has unique resources to assure that our most vulnerable citizens are protected – complex investigations of fraudsters targeting elders and immigrants and gun and opioid traffickers operating across county lines, for instance.
• Assure that public servants who betray their oath to act in the best interests of the public and those who steal from the Commonwealth are exposed and appropriately sanctioned. 
• Work with the newly formed Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission, which is charged with creating a mandatory certification process for police officers, as well as processes for decertification, suspension of certification, or reprimand in the event of certain misconduct.

Standing Up for Workers

Andrea knows that the system is stacked against our hard-working families.  Workers can be denied critical benefits that make it easier to care for their families, like a decent wage paid on time, dependable hours, and adequate sick time and family and medical leave, as well as affordable insurance premiums. Massachusetts workers fought hard—at the Legislature and at the ballot box—for laws that guarantee these benefits.  Andrea will use every tool at her disposal to make sure that all workers get everything they have earned. 

As Attorney General, Andrea will stand up for our workers by:

• Partnering with labor unions to protect the PRO act and the right to organize.
• Fighting tirelessly against employer wage theft and advocating for the passage of wage theft prevention legislation on Beacon Hill. Andrea knows we need to change the behavior of companies that take advantage of workers – in every industry, from the gig economy to the trades – and will hold employers accountable using every tool at her disposal as Attorney General. 
• Strengthening the reach of the Fair Labor Division to touch every corner of the Commonwealth by partnering with existing community stakeholders, increasing cultural competence and language access, and growing the regional offices across the state to promote regional equity in the fight against wage theft. 
• Using the Public Protection and Advocacy Bureau to ensure working families get everything they’ve been promised, including a decent wage, protections afforded by the wage and hour laws, and fairly-priced health and auto-insurance. The Bureau will fight to ensure that workers keep their hard-earned money, and if they are victims of scams and unfair business practices that they get their money back. 
• Rooting out civil rights violations and discrimination, in the workplace and elsewhere, ensuring an even playing field for every working family.

Strengthening and Enforcing Gun Laws

Every Massachusetts resident has the right to feel safe in their homes, schools, and grocery stores, but the Supreme Court’s recent decision to expand gun rights has very serious implications that will undermine or eliminate the very laws that keep us safe. Those disproportionately harmed or unjustly targeted by gun violence will bear the brunt of this decision the most. Andrea knows the next Attorney General will play a key role in ensuring our Commonwealth remains vigilant and continues to lead the way on gun violence prevention measures. As Attorney General, Andrea will defend every aspect of our common-sense gun laws to protect the public and the future of Massachusetts.

Andrea will:

• Establish an Office of Gun Safety Enforcement within the Attorney General’s Office to serve as a one-stop shop for handling gun violence prevention, including regulatory, enforcement and litigation issues:
  • Designate assistant attorneys general whose primary duties include regulation and enforcement of gun safety and coordination of AGO activities that involve guns, including defense of the Commonwealth’s strong gun laws.
  • Create a Gun Violence Prevention Advisory Board consisting of law enforcement officials, community-based gun violence prevention experts, mental health experts, members of the faith community, and those with lived experience to make recommendations on gun violence prevention measures.
  • Make information and assistance for gun law compliance easily accessible for law enforcement, advocates on all sides of the gun violence prevention debate, and gun owners. 
  • Provide transparency about the AGO’s priorities for enforcing gun laws and its regulations governing gun sales and gun ownership.

• Prioritize community-based gun violence prevention methods to best disrupt cycles of crime, gun trafficking networks, incarceration and violence in neighborhoods across Massachusetts:
  • Identify funding sources for collaborative efforts between community-based violence prevention organizations and local law enforcement agencies.
  • Work with local organizations to create and bolster programs that teach formerly incarcerated individuals or those who otherwise interact with the criminal justice system about gun laws and gun safety.
  • Address disparities in legal gun ownership that all too often criminalize individuals in communities of color and create a program to expunge the records of those who demonstrate responsible behavior after a charge of illegal possession.
  • Evaluate ways to replicate and scale up successful community-based gun violence prevention efforts.
  • Enhance gun-tracing and centralized reporting of gun crimes in order to identify violence hotspots and to prosecute those who traffic in illegal guns.
  • Publicize Massachusetts’ red flag law and support those seeking to employ it.
  • Intentionally go after marketing practices that appear to target buyers who may perpetuate gun violence. 
  • Enhance enforcement of safe storage laws to make sure that those who own guns aren’t soft targets for thieves.
  • Revitalize and reinvent a statewide “Safe Neighborhood Initiative” as to embrace a community-based, proactive approach to criminal prosecutions that will incorporate enhanced collaboration between the Attorney General’s Office, local police departments, schools, and other key community entities and resources in areas with higher levels of gun and youth violence.

• Strengthen Massachusetts’ common sense gun laws:
  • Step up enforcement of assault weapons ban:
    • Work with the Massachusetts Legislature to identify dangerous semi-automatic rifles that currently evade the assault weapons ban, including identifying guns by lethal characteristics rather than by brand names.
    • Enhance prosecution of criminals using guns already designated as assault weapons under law.
  • Enhance prosecution of those who build and use ghost guns, which are weapons typically built by individuals rather than manufacturers, that have no serial numbers and are not traceable: 
    • Issue an enforcement policy that expands on a new federal rule restricting the sale of ghost guns in order to make clear that gun dealers in violation of the rule risk forfeiting their license.
    • Use existing unfair trade practice law to go after illegal internet sales of ghost gun blanks and 3-D printed weapons.
    • Encourage those who already own ghost guns to turn them in without penalty 
  • Address gun hoarding in Massachusetts:
    • Facilitate sharing of information about gun hoarding with local authorities with jurisdiction and power to see how and where such guns are stored.
    • Investigate gun dealers who appear to be selling guns indiscriminately.
    • Work with the Massachusetts Legislature on measures designed to limit gun and ammunition hoarding, including limits on annual and lifetime gun purchases.

• Bolster gun safety training requirements:
  • Work with state police on an enhanced gun safety curriculum for new gun owners, focusing on safe handling, safe storage, and the risks of unsecured guns.
  • Advocate to the Massachusetts Legislature to require regular range certification, safety, training and a written safety test as a prerequisite for obtaining a gun license.
  • Prosecute gun owners whose reckless conduct leads to unintended gun violence through theft and unauthorized use.
  • Hold gun sellers accountable if they sell a gun without safety features, particularly when such guns are sold to new and untrained gun owners.