The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the state of Idaho must pay for the gender reassignment surgery of an inmate in the Idaho State Correctional Institution.
Adree Edmo, 31, who is incarcerated for having pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy at a house party in 2012, was diagnosed with gender dysphoria the same year. Though biologically male, Edmo identifies as a woman, for which reason the prison has been providing hormone therapy for the past seven years.
“Hormone therapy has not completely alleviated Edmo’s gender dysphoria,” the court said, explaining how the presence of Edmo’s male genitalia nevertheless continues to cause distress. “Edmo testified that she feels ‘depressed, embarrassed, [and] disgusted’ by her male genitalia and that this is an ‘everyday reoccurring thought.'” The court then noted how Edmo purchased underwear “to keep, in Edmo’s words, her ‘disgusting penis’ out of sight.”
After describing in graphic detail Edmo’s multiple attempts to self-castrate, the court argued that failing to provide gender reassignment surgery at taxpayer expense would be a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. “We apply the dictates of the Eighth Amendment today in an area of increased social awareness: transgender health care,” the court wrote in its conclusion. “We are not the first to speak on the subject, nor will we be the last.”
“They certainly would treat a prisoner with cancer, they treat a prisoner with diabetes, or other chronic conditions,” Edmo’s lawyer, Deborah Ferguson, told local CBS affiliate KBOI. “So, we have a medically recognized condition that’s very treatable and we have been trying to get her the treatment that she very much needs.”
Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little said that his state intends to appeal the 9th Circuit’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. “The court’s decision is extremely disappointing,” Little said in a statement. “The hardworking taxpayers of Idaho should not be forced to pay for a convicted sex offender’s gender reassignment surgery when it is contrary to the medical opinions of the treating physician and multiple mental health professionals.”
Read the court’s decision below:
