Federal Judge Orders Gender Reassignment Surgery for Massachusetts Inmate
Leonard Link
http://newyorklawschool.typepad.com/leonardlink/2012/09/federal-judge-orders-gender-reassignment-surgery-for-massachusetts-inmate.htmlFor the first time, a federal court has ordered a state prison system to provide gender reassignment surgery for a transgender inmate. Chief District Judge Mark Wolf of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts issued an order on September 4 directing Commissioner Luis S. Spencer to "take forthwith all of the actions reasonably necessary to provide [Michelle] Kosilek sex reassignment surgery as promptly as possible." Judge Wolf found that denial of the surgery violated Kosilek's right as a prisoner to be free of "cruel and unusual punishment" under the 8th Amendment of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
"Kosilek is serving a life sentence, without possibility of parole, for murdering his wife," wrote Wolf. "Kosilek suffers from a gender identity disorder, which is recognized as a major mental illness by the medical community and by the courts. Kosilek is, therefore, a transsexual -- a man who truly believes that he is a female cruelly trapped in a male body. This belief has caused Kosilek to suffer intense mental anguish. This anguish has caused Kosilek to attempt to castrate himself and to attempt twice to kill himself while encarcerated, once while he was taking the antidepressant Prozac."
The Supreme Court has ruled that the 8th Amendment requires that prison authorities not exhibit "deliberate indifference" to the serious medical conditions of inmates. This means providing adequate medical care for such conditions, with adequacy defined in terms of the accepted standards of the medical profession. Judge Wolf determined that the medical profession has come to accept that gender identity disorder is a serious medical condition, requiring treatment calibrated to the seriousness of the condition.
