Employers’ Health Insurance Must Cover Gender-Affirming Care, Court Rules
metroweekly.comsued in court, arguing that the insurance exclusion in the county’s employee health plan is discriminatory and unconstitutional.
Specifically, she argued that the policy discriminates against her (and other transgender individuals) on the basis of sex, violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, and violates her right to equal protection under the law, as guaranteed by both the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution and the Georgia Constitution.Chief Judge Marc Treadwell, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia, found that the insurance exclusion “plainly discriminates because of transgender status,” and thus violates prohibitions against sex-based discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In his opinion, Treadwell pointed to evidence showing that Houston County’s health care plan, provided through Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, would provide hormone therapy for menopause and surgery for breast cancer to cisgender women, but does not cover the exact same procedures if the patient is a transgender woman.“The undisputed, ultimate point is that the Exclusion applies only to transgender members, and it applies to Lange because she is transgender,” Treadwell wrote, citing a U.S.
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