Weird as heck

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—A transgender prison inmate who had been the first to win a court order requiring California to pay for her sex-change surgery will be paroled instead.
California Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday opted to allow a parole grant awarded to Michelle Norsworthy, serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, to stand. At the same time, lawyers for the state told a federal appeals court they are dropping their challenge to the order for Norsworthy's surgery, calling it "moot."
Norsworthy has lived as a woman in California's men's prisons for about 15 years, receiving hormone therapy, counseling and women's undergarments. She's also been raped.
"Being housed with men, sexually assaulted and denied critical health care these past 30 years, Michelle has suffered greatly in prison," her lawyer, Ilona Turner, director of the Transgender Law Center, said in a statement.
Norsworthy's suffering continued, Turner said, "every day she is denied the surgery she desperately needs."
A federal judge in April ruled that sex reassignment was "medically necessary" for Norsworthy and the state must provide it. In May, a federal appeals court set aide the surgery until California could appeal. That same day, state commissioners at Mule Creek State Prison found Norsworthy suitable for release from prison.
If Brown had blocked Norsworthy's release from prison, a federal court panel next week would have taken up California's appeal of an order to pay for her sex-reassignment surgery. California argued the surgery is optional and not medically required.
Taxpayers might still pay for her surgery. California's state medical insurance program, Medi-Cal, covers sex reassignment operations as well as other forms of transgender care including hormone therapy. According to that agency, about 850 individuals received those services in 2013, the most recent year for which data are available.
That treatment became available on a case-by-case basis since 2001, also the result of a court case.
Norsworthy is not the only transgender inmate seeking sex-reassignment surgery in California prisons. A federal appeals panel in June gave credence to inmate Mia Rosati's claims of severe symptoms, including repeated attempts at self-castration, without sex-reassignment surgery. They wrote that there was "plausible" evidence that officials at a San Diego prison "recklessly disregarded an excessive risk to her health" when they accepted the word of an untrained physician's assistant that Rosati did not need the operation.





"Deliberate indifference to the serious medical needs of an inmate is 'cruel and unusual punishment' under the Eighth Amendment," the justices said.
Rosati's request for surgery is now back before a lower court.
A prominent researcher on the subject sees the court cases as part of a broader shift in the treatment of transgender inmates.
"Nobody was asking for makeup in 1980," said Valerie Jenness, dean of the school of social ecology at the University of California, Irvine. She said it is "gigantic" that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security now requires agents to use "she" when referring to men who are transgender females.
There are nearly 400 transgender inmates in California prisons receiving hormone treatment, including on death row, according to state reports and medical data.

Today, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reached a groundbreaking settlement with Shiloh Quine, a transgender woman held in a men’s prison, to move her to a women’s facility and provide medical care, including gender-affirming surgery, determined necessary by several medical and mental health professionals. In the settlement, the state also agreed to change its policies so that transgender prisoners can access clothing and commissary items consistent with their gender identity. The state also affirmed that it is revising its policies regarding transgender inmates’ access to medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria, including surgery.