The state of Georgia is fighting in federal court to enforce its law banning prisoners from sex-change surgeries funded by taxpayers, and the state’s top lawyer is willing to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court to protect public money from going to what he calls trans activism.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is battling to enforce Senate Bill 185, a law enacted in May that prohibits public funds from paying for hormone therapy, surgeries and other sex-reassignment interventions within the prison system.
“The conversation is just absurd,” Mr. Carr told The Washington Times’ “Court Watch” podcast. “Georgia taxpayers should not pay for sex change operations for prisoners. They don’t want to do it.”
Given the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in United States v. Skrmetti, which held that Tennessee may enforce its law against “gender-affirming care” for minors, Mr. Carr believes that precedent is on his side.
“I am prepared to take it all the way up to the Supreme Court if need be,” he said.
“If an adult wants to pay for something on their own, that’s their business,” he said. But “there is no constitutional right for a prisoner to get a sex-change operation. There’s no constitutional right for a prisoner to have it paid for.”
Fighting back are transgender inmates unwilling to relinquish their publicly funded gender-transition drugs and surgeries.
The prisoners won the first round in December when Judge Victoria M. Calvert, a Biden appointee to the Northern District of Georgia, ruled against the state measure.
“The Court finds that there is no genuine dispute of fact that gender dysphoria is a serious medical need,” the judge wrote, in granting the prisoners a class action and an injunction against the state law.
The prisoners, led by named plaintiff Isis Benjamin, argue that the law violates the Eighth Amendment — which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
“Defendants’ termination, modification, withdrawal, and denial of Plaintiffs’ medically necessary gender dysphoria treatment based on a blanket ban prohibiting individualized medical treatment pursuant to SB185 have unreasonably put Plaintiffs and other Class Members at grave risk of physical and psychological harm, including resurfaced gender dysphoria, depression, anxiety, mood dysregulation, self-harm, self-surgery, or death by suicide. Defendants’ actions therefore violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment,” their initial filing read.
“The district court order speaks for itself, and we look forward to the 11th Circuit’s consideration of that carefully reasoned ruling,” said Amanda Seals, the lawyer who represents a prisoner.
Mr. Carr called the Eighth Amendment argument “junk science.”
“Nothing in the Constitution authorizes federal courts to encroach on a state’s traditional police powers and override the policy choices of a state legislature with respect to controversial and unproven sex-change interventions,” Georgia argued in its appeal.
The case is now pending before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and 20 other red states — plus the Arizona Legislature — are backing Georgia.
They say federal courts should stay away from the issue and leave transgender medical treatment regulation to the state lawmakers.
“When States exercise their police power to regulate whether and when a medical treatment may be administered, courts must defer to those decisions — not second-guess them or subordinate them to the contrary opinions of medical interest groups,” the states’ brief read.
The issue rose to the forefront during the 2024 presidential campaign after Republicans released ads blasting Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for gender-transition surgeries for inmates, including incarcerated illegal immigrants.
• Valerie Richardson contributed to this report.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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