HELENA – Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen joined a coalition of 24 state attorneys general in asking the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a lower court’s decision that would allow a convicted murderer in Indiana to receive a taxpayer-funded sex-change surgery.
In the amicus brief filed Wednesday, the attorneys general argue that an Indiana law prohibiting sex-change surgeries for incarcerated people should be upheld and the plaintiff, Autumn Cordellioné, should not be granted a sex-change surgery as it is not a procedure granted under Eighth Amendment which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” Additionally, there has been no medical consensus that the surgery in question is necessary or an effective treatment for gender dysphoria.
“Federal courts should be especially reticent to second-guess state officials’ decisions regarding the medical care inmates receive. Because the Eighth Amendment prohibits only ‘cruel and unusual punishments,’ a prisoner bringing a deliberate-indifference claim must ‘demonstrate that the treatment he received was blatantly inappropriate’—i.e., that ‘no minimally competent professional’ could have treated the inmate as the prison did,” the brief states. “That’s a difficult, if not impossible, standard for an inmate to meet when the medical community is still debating how best to treat the condition at issue—here, the plaintiff’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria.”
The district court erred in granting Cordellioné, who is serving 55 years in state prison for the strangulation of an 11-month-old, a preliminary injunction in the case because in doing so, the court upended the status quo, ultimately granting permanent relief to Cordellioné since sex reassignment surgery is irreversible.
Additionally, the court erred in accepting incomplete evidence submitted by the plaintiff from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s (WPATH) Standards of Care. Since the plaintiff moved for “emergency” relief, the defendant, the Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction, was only allowed to conduct limited discovery into WPATH on an expedited basis before the preliminary injunction hearing. Given the opportunity, discovery would have shown the organization used those standards to advance political and legal goals, made recommendations based on direction and pressure from the Biden administration, and failed to properly manage conflicts of interest.
“Contra the district court’s conclusion, the WPATH Standards are not ‘credible and reliable,’ and they should not be relied on to constitutionalize a standard of care under the Eighth Amendment. The Commissioner should be allowed the opportunity to conduct discovery and compile an evidentiary record that shows just that,” the brief states.
Attorneys general from Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming also joined the Alabama-led brief.
Click here to read the brief.
