Court Rules State Must Provide Sex Reassignment For Inmate

Via American Action News:

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered one of the most conservative states in the Union to pay for a sex reassignment surgery for a trans inmate.

That inmate, serving a 10-year sentence in Idaho, just so happens to be a convicted child molester.

However, Governor Brad Little (R) isn’t taking the court’s decision lying down, vowing that the good people of the Gem State won’t pay for the approximately $25,000 procedure.

Per the Daily Wire:

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution states that “[e]xcessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” on criminals. That amendment, a three-judge panel ruled Friday, requires the State of Idaho to pay for the $20,000 to $30,0000 sex reassignment surgery for Adree Edmo, a biological male convicted of sexually abusing a 15-year-old at the age of 22 and who claims to identify as a female.

Edmo began serving time in a male prison in 2012. In 2017, Edmo sued the state, claiming the state’s refusal to pay for the controversial and costly surgery was “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Last December, Federal District Judge B. Lynn Winmill sided with Edmo, ruling that the state should fund the surgery, a ruling the state appealed. On Friday, the panel agreed with Winmill, concluding that prison officials were “deliberately indifferent to Edmo’s gender dysphoria, in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” as reported by Boise State Public Radio. Prison officials, the panel wrote, have not provided for what the judges say are Edmo’s “medical needs” due to the “extreme suffering” caused by gender dysphoria.

Edmo, who is due for release in early 2021, has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person identifies as the opposite of his or her biogical sex. NPR notes that Edmo reportedly twice attempted “self-castration.”

The State of Idaho has 90 days to appeal the decision.