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A State's Obligation To Fund Hormonal Therapy And Sex-Reassignment Surgery For Prisoners Diagnosed With Gender Identity Disorder, Rena M. Lindevaldsen
A State's Obligation To Fund Hormonal Therapy And Sex-Reassignment Surgery For Prisoners Diagnosed With Gender Identity Disorder, Rena M. Lindevaldsen
Faculty Publications and Presentations
This article explores whether a state law imposing a flat ban on the use of funds to provide cross-gender hormones or sex-reassignment surgery for prisoners diagnosed with GID satisfies the Eighth Amendment standard of deliberately indifferent to serious medical needs. In other words, the issue is whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for a state to refuse to provide hormones or sex-reassignment surgery to GID prisoners. The district court in Kosilek v. Spencer1 held that it does: the state violated the Eighth Amendment in providing feminizing hormones to Kosilek but refusing to provide him sex-reassignment surgery. Part I …