Sex reassignment for prisoner affirmed

Listen to this article

A 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel has decided, 2-1, to uphold a federal judge’s order requiring the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC) to provide a prison inmate with sex reassignment surgery.

U.S. District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf found that the DOC’s failure to provide the surgery — which was said by a group of qualified doctors to be medically necessary to treat Michelle Kosilek‘s condition — violated Kosilek’s Eighth Amendment rights.

“The judge was well-placed to make the factual findings he made, and there is certainly evidentiary support for those findings,” Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson wrote for the 1st Circuit majority. “Those findings — that Kosilek has a serious medical need for the surgery, and that the DOC refuses to meet that need for pretextual reasons unsupported by legitimate penological considerations — mean that the DOC has violated Kosilek’s Eighth Amendment rights.”

Judge Juan R. Torruella dissented.

“The Eighth Amendment proscribes punishment, including punishment in the form of medical care so unconscionable as to fall below society’s minimum standards of decency,” he stated. “Its boundary simply does not reach, however, to instances of care that, although not ideal, illustrate neither an intent to harm nor the obstinate and unwarranted application of clearly imprudent care.”

The 118-page decision is Kosilek v. Spencer, Lawyers Weekly No. 01-010-14.

Click here to read the full text of the opinion.