A transgender state employee in Alaska is suing the state for denying her health care benefits, thereby forcing her to pay out-of-pocket expenses for medically necessary surgery.
Alaska’s current health insurance plan for state employees prohibits coverage for the same surgical procedures used in transition-related surgery that would otherwise be covered had the patient been cisgender instead of transgender.
Jennifer Fletcher, a 36-year old Juneau resident who works as a state legislative librarian, was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2014. Consulting with her doctors, Fletcher started hormone therapy and was advised to pursue gender confirmation surgery as well.
Because AlaskaCare has contained a blanket exclusion on transition-related surgery since 1979, Fletcher was denied coverage for the surgery and had to pay out of pocket. Beginning in 2018, AlaskaCare began covering hormone therapy for transgender employees, recognizing it as medically necessary, but continues to deny requests for surgical-related expenses.
Fletcher subsequently enlisted the help of Lambda Legal and sued the state.
“Jennifer Fletcher was denied coverage for medically necessary treatment specifically because she is transgender,” Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Peter Renn said in a statement. “This is unlawful and stigmatizing discrimination that jeopardizes the health of hardworking state employees. The state employee health care program — AlaskaCare — covers medically necessary treatment for all state employees except transgender employees. That’s textbook discrimination by any standard.”
In its lawsuit, Lambda Legal argues that the State of Alaska is violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits sex discrimination. In March 2018, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found that there was reasonable cause to believe the State of Alaska violated Title VII when it refused to cover Fletcher’s medical expenses.
“All that I am asking is that the State of Alaska stop discriminating against people like myself,” Fletcher said in a statement. “My coworkers are able to receive coverage for their care, but coverage for transition-related care is denied. This sends a clear message that the State does not value me, and does not consider me equal to its other employees, by forcing me to pay out of pocket for my medically necessary care. How is this not discriminatory, when equivalent care is routinely provided to other state employees?”
Most mainstream medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association, recognize that transition-related surgical treatments are often considered medically necessary for transgender people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. As such, they have called for an end to discriminatory exclusions like those in AlaskaCare.
“Whether your insurance will cover medically necessary treatment should not depend on who you are,” Lambda Legal Counsel Tara Borelli said in a statement. “The State itself recognizes that transition-related care is medically necessary, which is why it covers hormone therapy. The only reason for this lingering blanket exclusion against surgical treatment is irrational discrimination.”
A Drag Story Hour event in Alaska was delayed following a bomb threat, but local community members were able to spin straw into gold and, with the help of local businesses, raised over $13,000 to support the LGBTQ group that organized the event.
The Seward Pride Alliance of Seward, Alaska, had planned a Drag Story Hour event for Saturday, June 8, at the Seward Community Library and Museum as part of its Pride Month festivities. While waiting for the event to start, families with children worked on arts and crafts at the library.
But library officials received a call from an unknown person threatening to bomb the story hour, necessitating the evacuation of the library, reports the Homer News.
A Montana judge ruled that a law seeking to erase transgender existence by defining the term "sex" as narrowly as possible is unconstitutional.
On June 25, Missoula County District Court Judge Shane Vannatta struck down the law on technical grounds in response to a lawsuit from a group of plaintiffs who identify as transgender, intersex, or outside of the gender binary.
While the plaintiffs had sought to challenge the law for denying them legal protections and infringing on their right to free expression, Vanatta did not address those claims.
Instead, he focused on the bill's title, which he called misleading for failing to define whether "sex" referred to a person's gender or to the act of sexual intercourse and for failing to indicate that the terms "male" and "female" would be defined in the body of the bill.
DeShawn Watkins, of Sharon, Pa., faces several criminal charges, including first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse, in relation to the death of 14-year-old Pauly Likens, a Western Pennsylvania transgender youth. Watkins is currently being held in the Mercer County Jail without bail.
Pennsylvania State Police said that dismembered human remains were found partially in the water of Shenango Lake on June 25. More dismembered remains were found in Shenango Lake and "various" remote locations over the following week. The Mercer County Coroner determined they all belonged to the same person, who was eventually identified as Likens.
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