Wisconsin has restored coverage for gender confirmation surgery for the state’s transgender employees.
The state’s Group Insurance Board voted 5-4 on Wednesday to cover transition-related treatments for people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The surgeries will start being covered starting Jan. 1, reports the Associated Press.
“What we’re talking about is the improved health and well-being of our members for no cost,” board member Herschel Day, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said. Day added that providing the coverage shouldn’t impact premiums.
The board had previously approved coverage for gender confirmation surgery in 2016, but rescinded its decision in 2017 after receiving political pressure from Republican Gov. Scott Walker, a longtime opponent of LGBTQ rights.
Last year, a state consultant claimed that providing the coverage or other transition-related treatments would cost about $100,000 to $250,000 annually, assuming that two to five individuals were to pursue the surgery.
According to the AP, UnitedHealthcare, which is starting a Medicare Advantage program for state workers and retirees, agreed with the decision to cover the surgery. The company told the board that the state’s refusal to cover such procedures would cause the company to be out of compliance with federal Medicare rules.
Last year, the state was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin on behalf of two transgender employees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who complained after they were denied coverage for surgical costs, even though their doctors had confirmed that the surgery was considered medically necessary.
One of the plaintiffs, Alina Boyden, was forced to forego gender confirmation surgery, while the second, Shannon Andrews, was forced to pay $21,000 in out-of-pocket expenses. Both women claimed that the denial of coverage violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and under several other federal laws prohibiting discrimination based on sex.
Last month, a federal judge ruled, in a case brought by two other state residents, that Wisconsin also can’t ban Medicaid funds from being used to pay for gender confirmation surgery.
"It really started just as a Twitter joke," recalls filmmaker Vera Drew, of her boldly creative comic book movie spoof The People's Joker, a passion project largely inspired by the Oscar-winning 2019 Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix.
"My friend Bri just commissioned me to re-edit Todd Phillips' Joker, and I started doing that," Drew tells Metro Weekly. "And then over the course of a few months, it grew in scope."
As Drew involved other artists in assembling a kaleidoscopic, mixed media take on Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime, what started as a joke between friends eventually gained unstoppable momentum. "And as that started happening," says Drew, "it was just like, 'Okay, no, let's just make an original movie here. Let's just make a parody.'"
Electronics retail giant Best Buy offered to screen donations from its employee resource groups going to LGBTQ organizations or causes after being pressured by a conservative think tank that holds shares in the company.
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing recently made public, Best Buy engaged in a months-long email exchange with the National Center for Public Policy Research, a self-described "nonpartisan, free-market conservative think tank."
In those emails, which began on December 11, 2023, NCPPR sent the company a shareholder proposal asking the retailer to produce -- and distribute at its annual shareholder meeting in June -- a report analyzing how its partnerships with LGBTQ organizations benefit the company's business, according to NBC News.
A Planet Fitness gym in Alaska banned an anti-LGBTQ woman who photographed a transgender member who was using the women's locker room.
Patricia Silva, a life coach from Fairbanks, Alaska, posted a public Facebook video on March 11, in which she claimed to have seen a "man shaving in the woman's bathroom" at the gym, reported the British tabloid Daily Mail.
"I realize he wants to be a woman, he gets to be a woman," Silva said in the video. "I love him in Christ. He's a spiritual being having a human experience. He doesn't like his gender, so he wants to be a woman, but I’m not comfortable with him shaving in my bathroom. All right. I just thought I'd say it out loud."
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