A federal judge has preliminarily blocked a Georgia law prohibiting prison inmates from receiving gender-affirming care.
According to a press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights, Judge Victoria M. Calvert ruled on a class action lawsuit filed by nearly 300 incarcerated transgender people, finding that the plaintiffs would likely succeed on their claim that Georgia Senate Bill 185 violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
A plaintiff in the case, who asked to be anonymous, said, “To be on hormones but then have them taken away feels like I’m being pushed back into the closet. I experienced joy and freedom, and then to have it taken away, it feels like being in a prison inside the prison.”
Signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May and implemented by the Georgia Department of Corrections in July, the bill targets hormone therapy and other forms of gender dysphoria care that doctors, judges, and GDC itself have deemed medically necessary.
The law not only prohibits the state from spending money on gender dysphoria care in prison; it also bans incarcerated people from paying for it themselves. Meanwhile, it allows people who are not trans to receive the same treatments, such as hormone therapy, that it denies trans people.
In enjoining the law, the judge granted the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction to restore hormone therapy and treatment evaluations, and said a denial of such treatment is likely to violate the Eighth Amendment. Federal courts have paused enforcement of laws similar to SB185 in other states due to constitutional concerns.