{"id":810,"date":"2019-07-13T12:41:04","date_gmt":"2019-07-13T12:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mymedicplus.com\/news\/?p=810"},"modified":"2019-07-13T12:41:04","modified_gmt":"2019-07-13T12:41:04","slug":"ama-advises-u-s-supreme-court-on-transgender-individuals-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mymedicplus.com\/blog\/ama-advises-u-s-supreme-court-on-transgender-individuals-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"AMA advises U.S. Supreme Court on transgender individuals\u2019 rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source: ama-assn.org<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the U.S. Supreme Court in 1994 decided a case involving a transgender individual\u2019s rights, it looked to the American Medical Association to medically define the plaintiff who asked the court to protect her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dee Farmer was assigned at birth male, but identified as female. She wore women\u2019s clothing, underwent estrogen therapy, received silicone breast implants and underwent an unsuccessful \u201cblack market\u201d testicle-removal surgery. Farmer, who was serving a federal sentence for credit card fraud, sued federal prison officials for violating her Eighth Amendment rights to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment while in prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmer had continued hormone therapy and presented as female in prison, according to court records. She was generally separated from the male population at the first prison she was housed, in part for behavior and in part for safety. After being transferred to another prison, she was placed in a general population where she said she was beaten and raped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bureau of Prison\u2019s medical personnel had diagnosed Farmer as transsexual and justices in their opinion turned to the AMA\u2019s 1989 Encyclopedia of Medicine for the medical definition quoting that it was “[a] rare psychiatric disorder in which a person feels persistently uncomfortable about his or her anatomical sex,” and who typically seeks medical treatment, including hormonal therapy and surgery, to bring about a permanent sex change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Litigation Center of the American Medical Association and State Medical Societies and 10 other medical organizations noted that this definition was out of date in an amicus brief they filed in a 2017 case, Adams v. School Board of St. Johns County, Florida.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is now understood that being transgender implies no impairment in a person\u2019s judgment, stability, or general social or vocational capabilities,\u201d the brief stated. \u201cGender dysphoria is a condition characterized by clinically significant distress and impairment of function resulting from the incongruence between one\u2019s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court in\u00a0Farmer v. Brennan\u00a0sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration of whether prison officials knew the risk, with the high court justices ruling that prison officials could be found liable for denying an inmate humane conditions if they knew of or disregarded an excessive risk to the inmate\u2019s health or safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmer ultimately lost the case during the retrial, but the Supreme Court ruling was precedent-setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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