The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) claimed in a lawsuit filed on Monday that a hospital system’s insurance program is discriminating against a transgender person for refusing to cover “transition-related healthcare.”
Josef Robinson, a nurse at a hospital in Chandler, Ariz., who is biologically a woman but identifies as a man, argues that Dignity Health’s insurance program should pay for gender transition surgery. The ACLU is arguing the insurance program “discriminates on the basis of sex, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Affordable Care Act.”
“All I want is the same health benefits other, non-transgender Dignity employees receive, which is coverage for medically necessary treatments,” said Robinson, who was forced to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for transgender-related care.
The lawsuit, Robinson v. Dignity Health, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Dignity Health is the fifth largest hospital system in the nation, and operates 39 hospitals and more than 400 care centers in California, Nevada and Arizona.
Dignity Health did not respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
