INDIANA – Federal and state authorities are operating well within the boundaries of the U.S. Constitution when they deny inmates’ requests for sex-change surgeries or hormone treatments, Attorney General Todd Rokita told a U.S. district court this week.
“Across the country, medical professionals and policymakers are engaged in intense dialogue over how to address surging cases of gender dysphoria,” Attorney General Rokita said. “The Constitution leaves policy choices about best medical practices to politically accountable policymakers.”
Attorney General Rokita is co-leading with Idaho a 24-state amicus brief defending an executive order by President Trump setting new guidelines affecting federal inmates claiming to experience gender dysphoria.
The order — titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” — prohibits inmates in federal prisons and immigration detention centers from obtaining taxpayer-funded sex-change procedures and requires biological males to be housed in men’s correctional facilities.
On behalf of several transgender inmates, the American Civil Liberties Union and Transgender Law Center have sued the Trump administration. They claim the executive order constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” violating the Eighth Amendment.
“Nothing in the Eighth Amendment’s text or history allows prisoners to demand whatever medical interventions they desire,” Attorney General Rokita said.
Attorney General Rokita is also continuing a legal battle in Indiana to defend the state’s ban on using taxpayer funds to provide sex-change surgeries to prisoners. A federal judge has ordered that state officials must accommodate a convicted baby-killer’s desire to obtain such procedures to assume the identity of a woman.
Attached is the brief in defense of President Trump’s executive order.
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