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Idaho ordered to pay for sex reassignment surgery for transgender inmate who sliced off testicle with razor

The ruling came after trans inmate Andree Edmo, 31, was denied sex reassignment surgery in Idaho by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals
UPDATED APR 8, 2020
(Police Department)
(Police Department)

A federal appeals court Friday ruled that depriving a transgender inmate with severe gender dysphoria of sex reassignment surgery is a form of "cruel and unusual punishment." The ruling came after trans inmate Andree Edmo was denied sex reassignment surgery in Idaho.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in the first ruling of its kind, ordered Idaho to provide gender-affirming surgery to the prisoner. The decision by the appeals court was directly at odds with a ruling issued by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year.

After the appeals court's latest ruling, Idaho's Republican governor, Brad Little, has vowed to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, according to NBC News.

The 31-year-old was jailed in 2012 for sexually abusing a child younger than 16 and is being held at the men's Idaho State Correctional Institution.

Edmo, according to reports, inflicted consistent self-harm and attempted to castrate herself with a razor blade twice, according to court documents. She was also featured in the Boise State Public Radio podcast 'Locked'.

The 9th Circuit, in its Friday ruling, stated: "Responsible prison authorities were deliberately indifferent to Edmo’s gender dysphoria, in violation of the Eighth Amendment," adding it was established that "Edmo had a serious medical need, that the appropriate medical treatment was GCS [gender confirmation surgery], and that prison authorities had not provided that treatment despite full knowledge of Edmo’s ongoing and extreme suffering and medical needs."

Security guards stand in front of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 12, 2017 in San Francisco, California. (Getty Images)

Little, however, condemned the ruling, calling it "extremely disappointing" and said that Idaho "cannot divert critical public dollars away from the higher priorities of keeping the public safe and rehabilitating offenders."

Meanwhile, a senior staff attorney at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), Amy Whelan, called the Idaho governor's promise to appeal the ruling a "very disappointing and reprehensible reaction by the state."

Whelan, who is among the attorneys representing Edmo, said that the NCLR took the inmate's case because of its focus on the most marginalized of the LGBTQ community and because “medical care is essential for transgender people." She also called Edmo's case a "very, very severe gender dysphoria" considering she had made consistent attempts to castrate herself.

"There are decades of Eighth Amendment precedent by the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court repeatedly has found that when you’re assessing whether prison officials are deliberately indifferent—which is the legal standard—with regard to the provision of medical care in prison, that you look to the consensus of the medical community,” Whelan told the outlet.  

“There is an extremely robust medical consensus by both the medical and mental health communities that these procedures are part of the standard of care," she said of gender confirmation surgery for patients diagnosed with severe gender dysphoria," adding that "foreseeable pain and suffering will result if people do not receive the care that they need," she added.

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