A federal judge in Georgia sided with a Houston County sheriff’s deputy, ruling that the county discriminated against the man by denying to pay for “gender-affirming surgery.”
The man, who goes by the name Anna Lange, told his boss, Sheriff Cullen Talton and coworkers in 2018 that he was going to start living as a woman and wanted “gender reassignment surgery.”
The Albany Herald reported on the ruling from Judge Marc T. Treadwell, a Barack Obama appointee:
Judge Marc T. Treadwell, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Macon, has ruled that the county’s policy is discriminatory because it only affects transgender employees, and it specifically discriminates against Lange because she is the county’s only openly transgender worker.
Treadwell noted, for example, the county’s health care plan would cover a mastectomy when deemed medically necessary for cancer treatment but not for gender dysphoria.
The Obama-nominated judge’s ruling relied partly on a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 that granted workplace protection from discrimination for LGBTQ employees, which was released the year after Lange sued the county.
Victory! A landmark ruling on a @TLDEF healthcare lawsuit was made in GA federal court. This is the first suit in the South to achieve a definitive court ruling that trans-related exclusions in an employee health plan violate #TitleVII.
Learn more: https://t.co/y6bI59RBwS pic.twitter.com/5dl8MC3wU2— Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (@TLDEF) June 3, 2022
“Ignoring Bostock doesn’t make it go away,” Treadwell wrote in his opinion, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Bostock v. Clayton County. “In short, the defendants can’t find a Bostock workaround.”
“The exclusion plainly discriminates because of transgender status,” Treadwell wrote.
The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, which filed the lawsuit on Lange’s behalf, said the ruling is “a landmark decision” for “transgender rights.”
“The court’s decision makes clear that depriving transgender people of health care is not only immoral but also illegal,” the fund’s legal director, David Brown, said in a statement.
Brown said the impact would be that employers cannot refuse “medically necessary, life-saving” care to people who reject their biological sex.
The report noted that Anthem insurance said “gender reassignment surgery” could cost more than $186,000.
The case is Lange v. Houston County, No. 00392, for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.
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