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The Justice Department on Monday inserted itself in a lawsuit concerning transgender medical interventions for prisoners.
The department filed a statement of interest in a federal case involving a trans-identifying man in prison in Georgia who wants to receive gender surgery.
The anonymous trans-identifying man, called Jane Doe in court filings, is claiming the Georgia Department of Corrections has violated his rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as well as his constitutional rights by not allowing him to get gender surgery.
“People with gender dysphoria should be able to seek the full protections of the American[s] with Disabilities Act, just like other people with disabilities,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“We are committed to ensuring constitutional conditions inside our jails and prisons so that those detained inside these facilities, including people with gender dysphoria, can live safely and receive needed medical care,” Clarke said.
The ADA has an exclusion for “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments” and “transsexualism,” but the Georgia trans-identifying incarcerated man is arguing that the exclusion does not apply to him because he has gender dysphoria.
The Justice Department agreed, saying that gender dysphoria causes “significant distress” and that “importantly, not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria.”
“Gender dysphoria does not fall within the GID Exclusion in the ADA,” the Justice Department wrote. “In addition, the Eighth Amendment prohibits refusing medically necessary gender-affirming surgery to the entire category of incarcerated individuals with gender dysphoria, no matter an individual’s particular circumstances.”
The trans-identifying man in the case is housed in solitary confinement at a men’s prison near Atlanta, Phillips State Prison, according to the Justice Department’s filing.
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“Because of the inadequate care and exacerbation of her gender dysphoria, Doe has engaged in repeated self-harm, including attempts at suicide and self-castration,” the Justice Department said in its press release on the issue.
The trans-identifying man began living as a woman in 1988 and wants to be transferred to a women’s prison, the department said in its statement of interest. Previously, he had access in prison to bras, but not make-up and wigs, the document says.
A number of trans-identifying men have ended up in women’s prisons, including some convicted of violent crimes.
In June, an infamous triple murderer who claims he is a woman, Dana Rivers, landed in a California state women’s prison. He was convicted of the triple murder of a lesbian couple and their 19-year-old son.
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