May 2024
Appeals Court: County to Pay for Transgender Employee’s Gender-Affirming Surgery
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Houston County, Ga. sheriff’s office discriminated against a transgender employee by declining to pay for her gender-affirming surgery.
Houston County Sgt. Anna Lange, an investigator for the Houston County sheriff’s office, sued Sheriff Cullen Talton in 2019 after she was denied coverage for the procedure. According to the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF), who represented Lange, she had worked in law enforcement for 26 years, with 17 of those years spent serving as a sheriff’s deputy in Houston County.
In 2017, Lange came out to her employer as a transgender woman, according to TLDEF, adding that Lange was diagnosed with gender dysphoria by her healthcare provider and was subsequently prescribed transition-related care.
“In her attempts to seek out this care, [Lange] learned that Houston County unlawfully excluded transgender healthcare from coverage under its employee health plan,” TLDEF said in a statement, adding that Lange and her attorneys “repeatedly attempted to persuade her employer to reconsider its decision.” That effort included testifying before the Houston County Board of Commissioners and filing charges with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, according to TLDEF.
In 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Marc Treadwell ruled that the county’s refusal to cover Lange’s prescribed gender-affirmation surgery amounted to illegal sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, noted GPB News, adding that Treadwell’s order cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision finding that a Michigan funeral home could not fire an employee for being transgender.
In Treadwell’s ruling, he ordered Houston County’s insurance plan to pay for Lange’s gender-affirming surgery, a procedure she eventually underwent. A jury awarded Lange $60,000 in damages; Houston County sought to undo Treadwell’s order and the damage award that Lange received.
“Today’s victory is a win not just for me, but for all transgender Southerners who deserve equal access to life-saving transition-related care,” said Lange, in a statement.
“I have proudly served my community for decades, and it has been deeply painful to have the county fight tooth and nail, redirecting valuable resources toward denying me basic healthcare—healthcare that the courts and a jury of my peers have already agreed I deserve. I’m pleased to see that yet another court has deemed those efforts to be unfair and illegal.”
24 May 2024
Category
Uncategorized