It can’t be easy to be trans anywhere in modern society. So it’s got to be far worse for trans people in Illinois prisons.

But those who fit into that group have found a champion, U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Rosenstengel.

The federal judge who presides in the Southern District of Illinois recently ordered the state prison system to revamp its procedures dealing with trans people, established a Jan. 22 deadline for a report on progress and singled out three prison officials for potential sanctions.

Like an angry schoolmarm cracking down on disobedient students, Rosenstengel gave Department of Corrections officials John Baldwin, Steve Meeds and Melvin Hinton an extra homework assignment.

“The court notes that no (corrections) representative attended any portion of the two-day preliminary injunction hearing. Because the court is concerned that IDOC is not taking plaintiffs’ allegations in this lawsuit seriously, the court orders each named defendant shall read the transcript of the evidentiary hearing, held on July 31-Aug. 1, and certify to the court, on or before Jan. 2, 2020, that he has done so.”

It remains to be seen how this legal battle will play out, although Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s corrections department is clearly on the defensive.

State officials have made no public comments on the judge’s order. They also have not responded to basic questions on the extent of the problem.

For example, how many transgender inmates are there among the 43,000-plus in state prisons? The corrections department’s “transgender committee” meets each month to review “approximately 20 cases” and go “over treatment plans and inmate requests.”

But is 20 the extent of the issue? Or are there more?

The gulf between the corrections department and the six plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union is vast.

The lawsuit provides six female names for the plaintiffs. But the department’s inmate locator shows no inmates identified by those names in the suit.

Because five of the six have common last names, it’s impossible to identify their location in the prison system. Only one of them — Sora Kuykendall — is potentially identifiable because there are only two Kuykendalls in the state prison system.

The ACLU is alleging that transgender inmates suffer from a variety of mental and physical disabilities, many of which stem from gender dysphoria. The ACLU is seeking a variety of policy and medical changes, including hormone therapy for transgender inmates not already receiving it, and sex-reassignment surgery.

Short of that, they want transgender inmates held in facilities consistent with their sexual identity, to be searched by guards whose gender matches theirs, access to products and clothing consistent with their gender, and the required use of their preferred pronouns by guards.

The litigation is based on the trans inmates’ constitutional claim that the state’s prison system is “indifferent” to their health concerns and, as a consequence, must be compelled by the court to make changes.

The issue was brought to the fore last year when a transgender inmate, Strawberry Hampton, sought a transfer to a women’s prison where she expected to be treated better.

Hampton, who has since been released, later won her transfer.

Rosenstengel’s opinion, however, indicated that trans women are not “well received” by inmates at women’s prisons.

One of the plaintiffs — Janiah Monroe — has been an inmate at a women’s prison. Authorities said she subsequently refused to take her prescribed hormones and sexually pursued other female inmates.

While the ACLU maintains that gender dysphoria is the problem that must be addressed to resolve the trans inmates’ issues, Dr. Lawrence Jeckel, a Champaign psychiatrist, expressed skepticism of that view.

“That’s not the case if you look at it in depth. These are very complicated, often tortured individuals,” Jeckel said.

He said they “have a belief they’re the wrong sex” and are often convinced that “surgery and changing will make them feel better.”

“That’s the wish, and that’s the hope,” said Jeckel, indicating that it’s not necessarily the result.

The plaintiffs testified to a long list of woes during the two-day hearing, detailing years of mental-health problems, including schizophrenia and depression, suicide attempts and self-mutilation, and frustration about being groped by fellow inmates and sometimes guards.

The judge was clearly sympathetic to their plight, even adopting some of the language invoked by trans advocates. For example, in her opinion, Rosenstengel referred to plaintiffs being “assigned” genders at birth.

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MADISON, Wisconsin, December 13, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Attorneys for several gender-confused Medicaid patients announced a settlement with the state of Wisconsin on Tuesday, clearing the way for gender-reassignment treatments to begin being offered at taxpayers’ expense.

Under the settlement, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services must establish a new “inclusive” policy on Medicaid coverage for transgender treatments and notify recipients that had previously been denied of their newfound eligibility, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported. Plaintiffs Cody Flack, Sara Ann Makenzie, Courtney Sherwin, and Marie Kelly will also split $840,000 in damages, and their law firms will receive $1.35 million in legal fees from the state.

The agreement settles a case brought by four gender-confused Medicaid patients against a 1997 state administrative provision that excluded “transsexual surgery” from Medicaid, which U.S. District Judge William Conley found in August constituted “sex discrimination” under the federal Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

“We applaud the Wisconsin Department of Health Services for accepting the Court’s rulings and the medical consensus that gender-confirming health care saves lives,” said lead attorney Joseph Wardenski. “We are delighted that the Court’s decision invalidating Wisconsin’s legally and medically indefensible coverage exclusion is now permanent.”

Wisconsin’s Medicaid system has an estimated $9.7 billion budget and 1.2 million enrollees, approximately 5,000 of whom are believed to have some form of gender confusion. The state argued that covering surgery for all of them could cost taxpayers as much as $2.1 million, which Conley rejected on the grounds that the estimates were well below one percent of the $3.9 billion share of Wisconsin Medicaid’s $9.7 billion annual budget.

The state also argued that transgender surgery has no proven medical benefit. A variety of scientific literature indicates that reinforcing a patient’s gender confusion rather than helping him or her overcome it fails to prevent significant emotional harm up to and including attempted suicide, with or without surgery. There is also a growing movement of former transgenders who have “de-transitioned” back to their real sex after experiencing “sex change regret.”

The case follows the Wisconsin Group Insurance Board 5-4 vote in August 2018 to cover hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery deemed “medically necessary” for public-sector employees.

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A law put up by Victoria’s Andrews government could expose women offering intimate services such as pubic waxing or underwear fitting to discrimination complaints if they reject trans women customers who still have penises, veteran human rights lawyer Moira Rayner has warned.

The new law would allow self-declared trans women, who possess a penis and have not undergone any sex-reassignment treatment, to change the sex that appears on their birth certificate, giving them access as women to equal opportunity protection.

Ms Rayner, a former state and federal human rights commissioner, said that, if enacted, the legislation could allow a Down Under version of Canada’s Jessica Yaniv case, in which a trans woman has lodged anti-discrimination complaints against 16 beauticians who did not want to handle her penis and testicles in order to grant her wish for a brazilian wax.

Ms Rayner said a female sole trader could come under pressure from a Yaniv-style action.

The Labor government said the current state law demanding surgery before any change to a birth certificate “sends a painful and false message that there is something wrong with being trans or gender diverse that needs to be ‘fixed’ ”.

Victorian Attorney-General Jill Hennessy said: “Everyone deserves to live their life as they choose, and that includes having a birth certificate that reflects their true identity.”

Critics of the new bill complain of a lack of robust debate, and Ms Rayner said Ms Hennessy “should be asked to make sure she is given proper advice” on its possible unintended effects.

The bill returns to parliament next month.

University of Melbourne philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith agreed a Yaniv-style anti-discrimination complaint would be possible in Victoria — “exclusion from being hired to fit clothing to women in a shop, or from admission to a girls’ school, or to a women’s room in a dormitory, or hospital ward … you name it, if it’s women-only, there could be a case”.

She urged outright rejection of the bill, which makes a statutory declaration sufficient proof of official sex status, and allows birth sex to be changed every 12 months.

“Sex should not be a matter of belief,” Dr Lawford-Smith said. “If progressives want to disincentivise sex-reassignment surgery, they should protect gender expression, or gender identity, or trans status, separately — rather than trying to shoehorn it into sex.”

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