Twenty-four states have joined Idaho and Indiana in urging a federal appeals court to throw out a ruling that would require Alaska to provide sex reassignment surgery to a convicted child sex abuser behind bars.
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador and Indiana Attorney General Theodore Rokita filed a 32-page amicus brief Wednesday with the Ninth Circuit, pushing back against a magistrate judge’s order that Alaska refer prisoner Emalee Wagoner for sex-change surgery consultation. Wagoner is currently serving a 40-year sentence for sexual abuse of minors.
“A federal court ordered Alaska to refer a prisoner for sex-change surgery consultation, which threatens to set a precedent that forces other states to provide these procedures using taxpayer dollars,” Labrador said in a statement obtained by Fox News. “Idaho supports Alaska in defending state medical decisions against judicial overreach. The Eighth Amendment ensures basic medical care for prisoners, but it doesn’t require states to provide experimental gender transition surgeries.”
Magistrate Judge Matthew Scoble had found that Alaska acted with “deliberate indifference” toward Wagoner’s gender dysphoria diagnosis by refusing surgery. Alaska is now appealing to the Ninth Circuit.
The amicus brief argues the surgery doesn’t qualify as a “minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities,” in part because the procedure “is not available to free citizens in half of the Nation.” The brief warns that if the lower court ruling stands, it could trigger a wave of similar demands at prisons nationwide.
“The Eighth Amendment stops cruel and unusual punishment,” Rokita said. “It doesn’t give prisoners the right to demand risky, optional surgeries when doctors and scientists still strongly disagree about whether they’re safe or even helpful.”
Rokita warned that a ruling in Wagoner’s favor would cost taxpayers across the country. “If courts force states to provide these expensive, controversial procedures in one prison, it will open the floodgates everywhere, putting Hoosier taxpayers and families across the country on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars per surgery in virtually every state.”
The brief also cites a 2016 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services review that found selected studies “did not demonstrate clinically significant changes or differences in psychometric test results” following sex-change surgeries. State attorneys general also challenged the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, accusing it of adjusting its medical guidance “to accommodate external political pressure.”
The case has drawn attention beyond the parties involved, with 24 state officials now formally on record against the lower court’s interpretation of the Eighth Amendment. The outcome of the Ninth Circuit appeal could set precedent affecting prison medical policies in every state.
