The latest in a long-running legal battle against an Indiana law that prohibits the surgery is a federal district court ruling in Indiana ordering the state Department of Correction to perform a sex change for a transgender prisoner convicted of the reckless murder of a child.
The case, now in its 2nd year, concerns inmate Autumn Cordellione’s request for gender reassignment. In 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of Cordellione against the Indiana Department of Corrections. The suit challenged an Indiana law that prohibits the Department of Corrections from using taxpayer money for sex reassignment surgery. ACLU claims that the Indiana law violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or unusual punishment”.
In a filing dated March 5, Judge Richard Young, an appointee of Clinton, stated that “the court ordered the Indiana Department of Correction Commissioner to be preliminary enjoined” to take any reasonable action to ensure Ms. Cordellione’s gender affirming surgery as soon as possible. Cordellione is seeking to extend the order for a second time. “Her motion to extend or renew preliminary injunction is granted for the following reasons.”
Documents show that Cordellione (born Jonathan Richardson) sought another injunction after the December 2006 injunction expired.
The court, in its order granting the preliminary injunction motion, acknowledged that “surgery could take some time because it would be performed by a doctor who was not contracted with IDOC.” The document states that the intention of the court is to renew the preliminary injunction for 90 days until surgery has been performed.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita defended the law of Indiana and filed a brief to a court in January defending Indiana’s ban on sex exchange operations. A spokesperson for the attorney general said that the Eighth Amendment does not require the state to provide “experimental treatments in general, or here when this inmate has been deemed a bad candidate for surgery” by multiple doctors.
This brief states that Indiana’s law came into force in 2023 and does not constitute “sexism” as defined by the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause because it prohibits all sexual reassignment surgery.
Rokita: “Convicted killers don’t have the right to ask taxpayers to pay for controversial and expensive sex change operations.” It lacks any common sense. “We will not stop fighting for our state’s prohibition on the use of taxpayer funds in providing sex-change surgery to prisoners.”
In the case that is still ongoing, the evaluation of psychologist Kelsey Beers was key. She was asked to assess Cordellione’s eligibility for the sex change surgery.
Beers stated that Cordellione would not be a good candidate to undergo the surgery. She said that Cordellione’s distress stemmed not from gender dysphoria, but was rather due to her diagnosis of borderline personality and antisocial personality disorders.
Beers noted further that Cordellione exhibited “an established pattern of attention-seeking behavior.”
Despite Beers’ conclusions, the court ruled that her report did not justify reconsidering its decision and questioned Beers’ qualifications.
The court concludes that the report of Dr. Beers’s report doesn’t present any significant facts that could cause the court to reconsider its decision to grant injunctive remedies to Ms. Cordellione, Young wrote.
Cordellione’s ACLU original lawsuit asserted that he was diagnosed as having gender dysphoria by 2020 and that he had been prescribed testosterone blockers and female hormones, both of which he has taken “consistently” since then.
In the lawsuit, Cordellione is also alleged to have received accommodations, such as “panties and makeup” in addition to form-fitting clothes, while imprisoned.
Cordellione’s gender dysphoria is reduced by gender affirming surgery, according to the lawsuit.
The filing states, “She believes the only way to remedy her gender dysphoria and the harm she suffers is by receiving gender affirming surgery, specifically orchiectomy and ovarianoplasty.”
The ACLU claims that Cordellione is a “woman trapped in a male body.” Cordellione has been identifying as female since the age of six.
Cordellione, in 2001, was found guilty of strangling to death his wife’s daughter aged 11 months while she was at work. According to documents of the Indiana Court of Appeals, Cordellione’s initial police interview was characterized as being “calm” and “unemotional”.