By John Riley on October 20, 2023 @JRileyMW
The state of Georgia settled a lawsuit brought by a transgender advocacy group challenging an exclusion in the Georgia State Health Benefit Plan that denies coverage for transition-related treatments.
On Thursday, the state reached a settlement with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund on behalf of three state employees who were denied coverage for treatments for themselves or their dependents, according to a TLDEF press release.
Two of the plaintiffs — Micha Rich, a staff accountant at the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, and Benjamin Johnson, a media clerk at an elementary school in Bibb County, Georgia — are transgender men who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and were advised to pursue social and medical transition to treat their dysphoria.
The third plaintiff, referred to by the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” is an employee of the state’s Division of Family and Children’s Services, whose adult transgender son, “John,” gets his insurance coverage through his mother’s plan.
In all three instances, the plaintiffs were denied coverage for gender confirmation surgery. Rich and John Doe were also denied coverage for hormone therapy — even though such treatments are offered to non-transgender patients if recommended by their doctors — because they would assist in a gender transition, violating the state employee insurance plan’s prohibitions on coverage for transition-related treatments.
As a result of the denials of coverage, all three trans individuals had to forego surgery for a significant period — in Rich’s case, two full years.
Rich and Doe ultimately had to pay out of pocket to cover the cost of their surgical and hormonal treatments, with Rich being forced to declare bankruptcy a few months later due to the financial strains placed on him.
Johnson was able to have his surgery covered by switching to a non-discriminatory Marketplace plan, which he had to pay for out of his own pocket.
Under the terms of the settlement, the members of the State Health Benefit Plan, including state employees and their dependents, will now be able to obtain coverage for gender-affirming treatments, effective immediately. Georgia has also agreed to pay $365,000 in total to the plaintiffs in the case, including Rich, Johnson, Jane Doe, John Doe, and the Campaign for Southern Equality, a nonprofit LGBTQ advocacy organization.
The money will cover some of the costs incurred as a result of the denial, including legal expenses associated with filing the lawsuit.
For the Campaign for Southern Equality, it will help cover the costs of grants that the organization doled out to transgender individuals, including some State Health Benefit Plan beneficiaries, to help them defray the out-of-pocket costs of pursuing gender-affirming care without insurance coverage.
The settlement also directs all insurance plans offered by State Health Benefit Plan to immediately add provisions clarifying that transgender health care coverage includes any medically necessary surgical or hormonal interventions recommended by a patient’s primary provider.
The revision to the plans will also remove language prohibiting insurance dollars from being used for gender-affirming treatments.
Additionally, Georgia is prohibited from attempting to craft similar insurance exclusions at any time in the future.
The settlement is timely, as open enrollment — the period during which individuals either renew their existing insurance coverage or choose to seek out better plans elsewhere — is currently underway for Georgia state employees, who must determine whether their plans provide them with sufficient coverage for treatments they may need.
The settlement also follows a June 2022 ruling in which a Georgia federal district court ruled in favor of a transgender sheriff’s deputy who was denied coverage for transition-related medical treatments under an exclusion in its employee health insurance plan — the first such ruling of its kind in the South.
The plaintiffs in the case celebrated the news of the settlement.
“I am thrilled to know that none of my trans colleagues will ever have to go through what I did,” Rich said in a statement. “I hope this is a new day for my beloved state of Georgia in its treatment of trans and nonbinary people.”
“When I was able to get the medical treatment I needed, I finally felt whole. I feel like this is the person I was meant to be, and my mental health has improved drastically,” Johnson said in a statement.
“In a year when transphobic extremists have pushed restriction after restriction for transgender people’s access to necessary health care, a development like this that will enable transgender Georgians to more easily access care is a huge victory,” Holiday Simmons, the director of healing and resilience for the Campaign for Southern Equality, said in a statement.
“No government should be inserting itself into residents’ private medical decisions, and we’re encouraged to see that transgender people who are state employees in Georgia will no longer be denied coverage for life-affirming and even life-saving health care.”
By John Riley on July 3, 2024 @JRileyMW
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.
By John Riley on July 17, 2024 @JRileyMW
Several state chapters of the Libertarian Party are attempting to block Chase Oliver, the party's official presidential nominee, from the ballot because of his hands-off stance on access to gender-affirming care.
Oliver won the party's nomination at its national convention in May, following seven rounds of balloting. Mike ter Maat, a former police officer, won the vice presidential nomination.
Oliver has previously said he hopes to get at least 2% of the vote in the presidential race and "continue to be a fly in the ointment of the two-party system."
He was critical of Donald Trump appearing at the Libertarian convention, where the former president was booed and jeered at by many convention attendees. He has also been critical of Democratic President Joe Biden and independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
By John Riley on July 15, 2024 @JRileyMW
GOP delegates adopted a convention platform ahead of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The new platform, at the behest of former President Donald Trump, walks back some of the previous platform's harsher language on issues like reproductive rights and same-sex marriage.
Trump advisers said they wanted the platform to more closely reflect the former president's stances on various issues.
"This is something hopefully you will pass," Trump reportedly told delegates when he called into a meeting of delegates last week, as reported by The Washington Post. "You will pass it quickly, and we will show unity in our party as opposed to the disaster that is going on with the Democrats.
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