Georgia settles lawsuit, agrees to pay for gender-affirming care for trans workers under state health plan – Georgia Recorder

Georgia state employees and their families who are insured under the Georgia State Health Benefits Plan can access transgender health care after the state agreed to a $365,000 legal settlement with three employees.

“When I was able to receive 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 dramatically. I hope this settlement means other Georgia state employees can experience the joy and relief I felt after receiving the medical treatment I needed,” said Benjamin Johnson, one plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The health plan covers about 660,000 people, including public school employees and their families.

Johnson, who worked as a media clerk at an elementary school, filed the lawsuit in December alongside Micah Rich, an accountant with the Georgia Department of Audit and Accounts and an unnamed state employee whose young adult was enrolled at the state level.

Prior to the regulation, state coverage excluded gender reassignment surgeries and related services, even when recommended by a physician as necessary care. Recommended treatments for gender dysphoria, a feeling of severe distress due to one’s sex at birth, may include adopting a new name and clothing style, taking hormones, or having surgery.

Lawyers for the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, or TLDEF, and Bondurant Mixson & Ellmore LLP said the old plan would reject services such as mastectomies and hormone treatments for transgender patients, even though the same treatment would be approved for a different purpose, what they said. amounted to discrimination against transgender people.

Under the regulation, state health plans will contain a provision defining health care coverage for transgender people. Exclusions for trans-related care will be removed and the state will not have the right to make similar exclusions, TLDEF said in a statement.

The $365,000 settlement will be split between the three state employee defendants, the defendant’s unnamed child, and the Campaign for Southern Equality, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting LGBTQ+ civil rights in the South .

“In a year where transphobic extremists have pushed restriction after restriction on transgender people’s access to necessary health care, a development like this that will allow transgender Georgians to more easily access care is a huge victory,” she said. said Holiday Simmons, director of healing and resilience for the Southern Equality Campaign.

Last month, Georgia’s ban on hormone treatments for transgender minors came back into effect after a brief injunction. A federal judge temporarily suspended the program but reversed his own ruling after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Georgia, ruled in favor of a similar bill in Alabama. This case, brought by families of transgender children, continues to make its way through the courts, with the families’ lawyers also arguing that offering treatments for other conditions, but not for gender dysphoria, constitutes discrimination.

Our victory today is not a precedent because the court did not rule – we were able to negotiate the removal of the exclusion without much litigation – and the subject is a little different, since our case concerns the employment, said David Brown, legal director of TLDEF. But many of the same arguments apply. At the heart of both cases is the importance of trans people having access to the health care they need, and today’s settlement emphasizes that there is no justification – legally, medically, moral or in any other way – to discrimination against transgender people who are simply seeking the same health care that everyone deserves.