The Montana Human Rights Bureau has found that a transgender woman working for Yellowstone County was discriminated against when her employer-provided health plan refused to pay for gender-affirming health care.
Eleanor Andersen Maloney, an attorney for Yellowstone County’s Department of Public Health and Human Services, sought help after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria in September 2017.
She sought counseling from a doctor, but was later informed that the county — which had initially approved coverage for their therapy sessions — would no longer allow her to use her insurance to pay for her therapy due to an exclusion prohibiting the plan from covering procedures or treatments related to a gender transition.
Maloney also sought pre-approval for a consultation with a surgeon to undergo gender confirmation surgery, but was informed that, due to that same exclusion, she would not be able to obtain pre-approval and would have to pay out of pocket if she insisted on moving forward with any surgery.
Maloney sent a letter seeking pre-approval for specific transition-related procedures. A month later, she received a letter denying her request, at which point she appealed the decision and even arranged a meeting with Yellowstone County commissioners to request that they remove the insurance exclusion from the employee health plan.
Maloney eventually resigned her position, citing the denial of care as the sole reason for her resignation. She then filed two grievances, one with the county attorney and another with the county’s human resources department, alleging that the denial of care constituted a form of unlawful discrimination. She also received a letter from the county denying her earlier appeal. So she enlisted the help of the ACLU of Montana to file a complaint with the state’s Human Rights Bureau.
According to the complaint, the denial of Maloney’s treatments based on her transgender identity constitutes a form of sex discrimination. It alleges that gender identity discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, which is illegal under Montana’s Human Rights Act, the Montana Constitution, the U.S. Constitution, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the Affordable Care Act.
In addition, Montana’s Medicaid policy explicitly covers gender-affirming health care for transgender people, meaning it would not be extraordinarily difficult or unusual for county governments to offer similar benefits without trans-specific exclusions.
“[I]f an insurance product carves out medical procedures, relying only on a person’s status as transgender as the determinative criterion, this is a distinction based on sex and it violates the Montana Human Rights Act’s insurance provision,” the Human Rights Bureau wrote in its findings, released Thursday. “…If Montana has a statute that says an insurance product cannot discriminate on the basis of ‘sex’ and an insurance product denies coverage for procedures involved in changing from one sex to another sex, it seems like a leap of logic to argue this is not ‘sex’ discrimination.”
The ACLU of Montana celebrated the decision.
“It’s very simple: discrimination on the basis of gender identity is illegal,” Elizabeth Ehret, an attorney for the ACLU of Montana. “Yet, the only reason Ms. Maloney was denied coverage for her healthcare was because of her gender identity. We are pleased with the findings of the Montana Human Rights Bureau and hope this leads to a change in Yellowstone County’s policy.”
Even though Maloney has since found a new job with a health care plan that does not contain a transgender exclusion, she still believes it is important to ensure Yellowstone County changes its policy for other transgender employees who may be hired in the future.
“I was denied medically necessary coverage because of an outdated and discriminatory insurance practice,” she said in a statement. “It hurts to be treated differently just because of who you are.”
Yellowstone County, which has previously argued it is justified in keeping the exclusion in place because there is no state or federal law explicitly prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity, has 30 days to respond to the Bureau’s most recent decision. If the county and Maloney are unable to work out an agreement, the case will move on to the Hearings Bureau for a formal hearing.
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.
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill preventing transgender girls in grades 5-12 from participating on female-designated sports teams.
He declared that the measure "ensures fairness and safety in women's sports" by prohibiting transgender females from competing against cisgender females, against whom they may have a physiological and competitive advantage.
New Hampshire is the 25th state to impose a restriction on transgender athlete participation.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, along with the national organization GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), criticized the law, which requires student-athletes to show a birth certificate or "other evidence" to prove their gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth.
The Biden administration has come out explicitly against allowing minors to undergo gender-affirming surgical procedures.
Though extremely rare, the surgeries have become an obsessive focus of anti-transgender movements, which claim that advocates for transgender rights are seeking to "mutilate" youth.
Last week, The New York Times published an article claiming that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization, WPATH, to remove age minimums for surgery from its treatment guidelines for transgender minors.
These are challenging times for news organizations. And yet it’s crucial we stay active and provide vital resources and information to both our local readers and the world. So won’t you please take a moment and consider supporting Metro Weekly with a membership? For as little as $5 a month, you can help ensure Metro Weekly magazine and MetroWeekly.com remain free, viable resources as we provide the best, most diverse, culturally-resonant LGBTQ coverage in both the D.C. region and around the world. Memberships come with exclusive perks and discounts, your own personal digital delivery of each week’s magazine (and an archive), access to our Member's Lounge when it launches this fall, and exclusive members-only items like Metro Weekly Membership Mugs and Tote Bags! Check out all our membership levels here and please join us today!
You must be logged in to post a comment.