Georgia’s AtlantaIn a class action complaint, a number of transgender inmates in Georgia’s prison system are contesting a new state legislation that forbids incarcerated people from receiving gender-affirming medical care, claiming the statute violates the constitution’s provision on cruel and unusual punishment.
The lawsuit addresses Senate Bill 185, which Governor Brian Kemp signed into law in May, and was filed Friday by five plaintiffs who represent almost 300 transgender prisoners. The law forbids the use of state funds for gender dysphoria therapies, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT), gender-affirming surgery, cosmetic operations, and prostheses.
Law Forces Inmates to Detransition
According to state officials, trans convicts are unable to pay for gender-affirming therapy while incarcerated and are prohibited from using public funding for such care under SB 185. This indicates that some inmates who had been on HRT for years were compelled to abruptly discontinue treatment—a procedure referred to as forced detransition.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the lawsuit with Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP, claims that this has had detrimental effects on both mental and physical health. Fantasia Horton, a plaintiff who started taking hormone replacement therapy in 2019, said that her treatment was abruptly discontinued after the law went into effect, even though her doctor had advised her to reduce her dosages gradually.
Medical Experts Warn of Harm
Doctors caution that abruptly stopping gender-affirming care can cause serious psychological discomfort, such as sadness, anxiety, and suicide thoughts, as well as harmful physical side effects.
It is cruel and unusual punishment to deny someone access to gender-affirming therapies while they are incarcerated. In an April opinion post, Atlanta-based psychologist Jan T. Mooney and doctor Mark Spencer emphasized that hormone withdrawal should be controlled over several months rather than stopped abruptly.
A History of Legal Battles
Georgia’s legal battle over transgender healthcare in prisons is not the first. Ashley Diamond, a Black transgender woman, filed a lawsuit against the state in 2015 after it refused to provide her hormone medication and sent her to a men’s prison. Advocates claim that the new law undoes a lot of the policy changes and settlement that resulted from that case.
As activists are compelled to battle for rights they believed were already established, it feels like a time machine traveling back in time, according to attorney Chinyere Ezie, who defended Diamond ten years ago and is currently in charge of the current case.
Potential National Impact
In other places, similar laws have been overturned. Wisconsin’s 2005 ban on prison-provided HRT and procedures was declared illegal by a federal court. A lawsuit in Colorado resulted in a settlement that mandates healthcare and housing modifications for transgender prisoners.
Although Ezie noted that overturning the statute would only be one phase in a broader fight against anti-trans regulations across the country, the Georgia plaintiffs aim to establish another precedent if they are successful.
Ezie declared, “We will keep using the courts, organizing, and lobbying against bills like this that cause so much avoidable harm.” We fight for this reason.
Do you think inmates should be able to receive gender-affirming treatment under Georgia’s prison healthcare policies? Tell the Saluda Standard-Sentinel community what you think.
