Trans prisoners in Georgia filed a lawsuit on Friday that they hope will turn back legislation denying them gender-affirming care.

Signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May and adopted by the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC) last month, SB185 prohibits any state funds or resources for hormone therapy in service of gender dysphoria care that doctors, judges, and the GDC itself have deemed medically necessary for trans prisoners incarcerated in Georgia state prisons.

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The order forces trans prisoners in the state to de-transition while allowing others who are not transgender to receive the very same treatments (including hormone therapy) that it denies trans people.

It’s a clear violation of equal protection and runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the lawsuit says.

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An estimated 300 transgender prisoners are incarcerated in Georgia state prisons.

“I’m bringing this lawsuit because trans people in GDC custody need an advocate, and I know there are people who will take their lives if this law is not blocked,” said plaintiff Isis Benjamin.

The law, S.B. 185, would also prohibit incarcerated trans people from paying for their own gender-affirming treatments.  

“We would never allow a state to decide that people in prison with diabetes should be cut off of insulin just because the state didn’t want to pay for it anymore,” said Staff Attorney Celine Zhu with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Benjamin and four other plaintiffs. “So why would we allow Georgia to cut off medically required care for people with a similarly serious diagnosis of gender dysphoria?”

“Lawmakers can’t be permitted to override the judgment of leading medical authorities and prison doctors, and disregard constitutional protections, simply because it applies to the treatment of gender dysphoria. Then we’re just state-sanctioning prejudice, with irreversible and fatal consequences,” she added in a statement.

S.B. 185 emerged amid a raft of anti-trans bills in Georgia and other states, and the Trump administration’s own anti-trans policies, which also target trans prisoners in federal facilities.

For more than a decade prior to S.B. 185’s passage, the Georgia Department of Corrections acknowledged that people with gender dysphoria in custody are entitled to “constitutionally appropriate” gender-affirming medical care, including hormone therapy. Such care is considered by most major American medical and psychological associations to be safe, essential, and effective for the overall well-being of trans people.

All the plaintiffs in the case filed today were diagnosed with gender dysphoria and have either been prescribed or are seeking evaluations for treatment, including hormone therapy and surgery.

One of the plaintiffs, a trans woman incarcerated in Phillips State Prison, has been receiving hormone therapy since 2019. On July 8, a prison psychologist told her that her therapy would be cut off. Her treatment was then abruptly terminated.

“Due to Defendants’ policies and actions in terminating her treatment, Ms. Horton is now at grave risk of physical and psychological harm,” the complaint states. “Three years ago, after losing access to hormone therapy for just one week after her prison’s supply of hormone therapy was temporarily depleted, Ms. Horton’s mental health plummeted and her depressive symptoms returned.”

Four GDC officials are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The suit, filed in the United States District Court in Atlanta, charges the officials with “deliberate indifference” to the medical needs of people in their custody. The lawsuit asks the court to issue an injunction blocking the law and declare that it violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.  

Lawyers for the plaintiffs believe they have a good chance of overturning the law.

A similar law in Wisconsin, which barred prison doctors from providing hormone therapy or gender-affirming surgery to incarcerated transgender people, was turned back in 2005, when a federal court ruled that its denial of gender-affirming care care constituted cruel and unusual punishment.  

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