THE US SUPREME Court has rejected an appeal from a convicted murderer in Massachusetts who had been seeking taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery in prison.
Michelle Kosilek, who was born Robert, shot her wife Cheryl Kosilek in 1990, and is currently serving a life sentence.
The justices of the Supreme Court – the highest court of appeal in the United States – today allowed a lower-court ruling to stand.
That ruling, in federal appeals court in Boston, overturned a landmark 2012 order that the state of Massachusetts must provide the sex-reassignment surgery.
Kosilek has been living as a woman for more than 20 years, and receiving hormone treatment at a medium-security prison in Norfolk, Massachusetts.
She has waged a lengthy fight for the surgery she says is necessary to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder.
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections, however, lists Kosilek’s gender as “Male.”
Courts throughout the US have found that prisons must evaluate transgender inmates to determine their health care needs, but most have ordered hormone treatments and psychotherapy, rather than surgery.
Contains reporting by the Associated Press.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say