US Supreme Court declines appeal from inmate denied gender-change surgery
A nearly 20-year legal battle by a convicted murderer seeking gender reassignment surgery at taxpayer expense ended Monday when the nation’s top court declined to hear an appeal by Michelle Kosilek.
Kosilek, now 65, and her lawyers argued that the surgery is medically necessary to treat her gender identity disorder and pointed to her suicide attempts, persuading a federal district court judge in Boston and, initially, the 1st U.S. District Court of Appeals. However, in a subsequent en banc decision, the Boston-based 1st Circuit reversed the earlier decisions. The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday let that decision stand without comment, according to the Associated Press and the Boston Globe.
“This is a terrible and inhumane result for Michelle,” said director Jennifer Levi of the Transgender Rights Project for the Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. The advocacy group helped Kosilek take her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We are satisfied with the court’s decision,’’ a spokesman for the state Department of Correction said in an email to the Globe.
Kosilek, who was originally named Robert Kosilek, was convicted as a man in the 1990 strangulation death of his wife, Cheryl McCaul and sentenced to life without parole in an all-male prison. Kosilek got a legal name change and taxpayer-funded hormone therapy and and has been living, as much as possible, as a woman while in prison.
She argued that refusing her the surgery constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment, because it is medically necessary. Gender identity disorder and the need for the surgery is recognized by psychiatrists and other physicians.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “En banc 1st Circuit ruling nixes state-funded sex-change surgery for prison inmate”
See also:
ABAJournal.com: “Federal judge says California has to pay for inmate’s sex-change surgery”
