The U.S. Department of Justice has reversed its support of an incarcerated trans Georgian in a lawsuit regarding state-funded gender-affirming surgery.
The DOJ withdrew its statement of interest in the anonymous 55-year-old Jane Doe’s lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Corrections, reversing the Biden administration’s stance that prisoners are constitutionally entitled to gender-affirming care.
The DOJ then filed a statement of interest in an unrelated but similar lawsuit arguing that trans inmates are not entitled to gender-affirming surgeries, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“The prior administration’s arguments in transgender inmate cases were based on junk science,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “States’ limited resources need not be wasted to provide these dubious surgeries to inmates.”
Doe’s lawsuit, filed in a Georgia federal court in December 2023, contends that she has been incarcerated in men’s facilities since 1992 and argues that the ban on gender-affirming surgery violates the Eighth Amendment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the federal Rehabilitation Act. In April 2024, a judge ordered the state to provide Doe body pads and hair removal cream while the case was litigated.
While the DOJ disputes evidence that gender-affirming care lowers risks for depression and suicidality, advocates believe that gender-affirming care is one of several necessary services trans prisoners need.
According to a survey from the Vera Institute of Justice and Black and Pink National, nearly 90 percent of the 280 incarcerated trans respondents had spent time in solitary confinement, 53 percent had been sexually assaulted, and 53 percent of those seeking gender-affirming medication were unable to access it.
This reversal of Biden-era recommendations and policies by the Trump administration is one of several federal moves impacting trans Georgians. This month, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta informed parents of trans patients that they would no longer be providing gender-affirming care following an executive order – which has been temporarily blocked from enforcement – blocking federal funding to hospitals providing trans care to minors.
