January 09, 2019
A Clinton-appointed federal judge has ordered taxpayers in Idaho to provide a transgender inmate convicted of sexually abusing a child with “medically necessary gender confirmation” surgery. In his ruling Judge B. Lynn Winmill writes that the Idaho Department of Correction’s (IDOC) refusal to fund the pedophile’s sex-change surgery puts him at risk of irreparable harm. “For more than forty years, the Supreme Court has consistently held that consciously ignoring a prisoner’s serious medical needs amounts to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” Judge Winmill writes in the order.
The prisoner, 31-year-old Adree Edmo, has been incarcerated in the men’s prison since being sentenced for sexual abuse of a child under the age of 16 in 2012. Before going to jail Edmo claims he lived as a woman, wore makeup and dressed in women’s clothes. He has also held two jobs while in prison and has presented as feminine at his places of employment, according to the court document. A psychiatrist eventually diagnosed Edmo with “gender dysphoria” and for years he has pushed to get a sex change at taxpayer expense, asserting that he feels depressed, embarrassed and disgusted with his male genitalia. IDOC officials repeatedly refused and Edmo’s pro bono attorneys sued the agency as well as its medical contractor, Corizon. Edmo will be the first prisoner in Idaho to receive the costly operation and the second in the country. Judge Winmill found that Edmo has a serious medical need that could result in unnecessary infliction of pain and injury if not treated.
“Gender dysphoria is a medical condition experienced by transgender individuals in which the incongruity between their assigned gender and their actual gender identity is so severe that it impairs the individual’s ability to function,” the court order reads. “The treatment for gender dysphoria depends upon the severity of the condition. Many transgender individuals are comfortable living with their gender identity, role, and expression without surgery. For others, however, gender confirmation surgery, also known as gender or sex reassignment surgery (“SRS”), is the only effective treatment.” The judge blasted prison officials for ignoring Edmo’s request, writing that “in refusing to provide surgery, IDOC and Corizon have ignored generally accepted medical standards for the treatment of gender dysphoria.”
The judge, appointed to the bench in 1995, found that the convict met important criteria for sex-change surgery, including a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, a strong desire to be rid of one’s primary and/or secondary sex characteristics because of a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/express gender and a strong desire for the primary and/or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender. The judge also writes that Edmo met two other crucial benchmarks; a strong desire to be treated as the other gender and a strong conviction that one has the typical feelings and reactions of the other gender.
To support his ruling, Judge Winmill also cites healthcare standards set by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), a nonprofit devoted to transgender health issues. The court order states that WPATH’s standards of care for gender dysphoria include changes in gender expression, hormone therapy to feminize of masculinize the body and surgical changes of the primary or secondary sex characteristics. They also include hair removal through electrolysis, laser treatment or waxing, breast binding or padding, genital tucking or penile protheses, padding of hips or buttocks and changes in name and gender marker on identity documents. The ruling dedicates more than four pages to WPATH and its extensive list of transgender healthcare standards. Idaho officials have six months to provide the child sex offender with the surgery, which reportedly costs around $100,000.
