Connect with us

National

Trans inmate sues Va. corrections department over denial of surgery

Lawsuit says refusal of medical care is ‘cruel and unusual punishment’

Published

on

The LGBTQ litigation group Lambda Legal on Aug. 26 filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Virginia Department of Corrections on behalf of a transgender man incarcerated at a state prison on grounds that he was illegally denied “medically necessary” care, including breast removal surgery.

The lawsuit charges that the denial of surgery for Jason Yoakam, 42, who has been assigned to the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Va., since 2004, violates the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.”

According to the lawsuit, prison officials also denied Yoakam treatment from qualified mental healthcare providers for gender dysphoria, a medical condition experienced by transgender people widely recognized by professional associations representing the medical and mental health professions, including the American Psychiatric Association.

A statement released by Lambda Legal points out that gender dysphoria is listed as a medical condition that some transgender people experience as significant distress when their gender identity is not congruent with their sex assigned at birth.  

“Mr. Yoakam is not seeking special treatment, just access to medically necessary health care and reasonable accommodations,” said Richard Saenz, a senior attorney for Lambda Legal and one of a team of attorneys representing Yoakam in the lawsuit. “Every incarcerated person has a right to basic health care based on their medical needs and should not face discrimination because of their sex,” Saenz said in the Lambda Legal statement.

“The only thing I am asking is to be treated fairly and have access to the same standard of healthcare that other incarcerated people receive,” Yoakam said in the statement. “It has been traumatizing, isolating, and stigmatizing to be denied health care services to treat the gender dysphoria that VDOC’s own providers have diagnosed,” he said.

The lawsuit says that from an early age Yoakam has believed his female body was a “mistake” and he finds his breasts an image of “shame and disgust.” It says prison officials did provide him with a “chest binder” that compresses his breasts, but which also causes pain and skin irritation and cannot provide the necessary treatment and remedy that only surgery can bring about.

By denying him surgery and other needed medical or mental health care, the lawsuit charges, prison authorities have also violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment as well as nondiscrimination provisions under the Americans with Disability Act and the Affordable Care Act.

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections and the facility where Yoakam is being held could not immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit

Lambda Legal says in its statement that prison officials told Yoakam he could not be approved for the bilateral mastectomy or chest surgery he requested because it considered the surgery an “elective” procedure that was not medically necessary for treatment of gender dysphoria.

The Washington Post reports that a Department of Corrections official told the Post in an email message that its internal guidelines for medical care for inmates calls for deciding on treatment and care requests on a case-by-case basis.

“All medically necessary treatment is available,” the spokesperson told the Post. “We follow the community standard of care.”

Court records show that Yoakam pleaded guilty in 2004 to a charge of first-degree murder and was sentenced by a Virginia judge to 30 years in prison, with nine years suspended for a total of 21 years of incarceration. An inmate information page on the Fluvanna Correctional Center’s website shows that Yoakam is scheduled to complete his sentence and to be released on May 23, 2022, after serving just over 18 years.

A corrections department spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached about Yoakam’s release schedule, but correctional systems often reduce the time served for inmates based on a number of factors, including good behavior.

Court records and all official references to Yoakam at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women refer to him by his legal female birth name. Saenz of Lambda Legal said Yoakam is in the process of legally changing his name to Jason Yoakam.

The court records and news media reports show that Yoakam, at age 24, was arrested on a first-degree murder charge and other related charges, including illegal firearms possession, on March 3, 2004, just over four months after he allegedly shot and killed James “Jamie” Lane, 39, on Oct. 15, 2003.

The incident occurred in Lee County, Va., located in the southwestern corner of the state near the Kentucky and Tennessee borders. The Kingsport, Tenn., Times-News reported in a Dec. 3, 2003, story that Yoakam was identified at that time as a lesbian woman who became enraged when his girlfriend left him to begin a relationship with Lane.

“Testimony from a number of witnesses indicated that the shooting may have stemmed from a love triangle with a twist,” the Times-News reported.

The newspaper reported that Lane’s ex-wife, Tonya Garrett Lane, 30, who is Yoakam’s half-sister, was charged with allegedly conspiring to murder the ex-girlfriend of Yoakam who reportedly left Yoakam to begin a relationship with her ex-husband.

“The ex-Mrs. Lane was apparently involved because she didn’t want her children ‘being raised by a (expletives deleted) lesbian,’” the Times-News reported based on testimony in court.

Advertisement
FUND LGBTQ JOURNALISM
SIGN UP FOR E-BLAST

National

Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information

Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources

Published

on

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.

The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.

“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.

 “These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.

It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”

 The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question. 

A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit. 

While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management. 

The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.

 Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.   

“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.

 “Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says. 

Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”

 Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”

Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.

 “As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from  the Washington Blade. 

“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said. 

The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”

It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”

The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society. 

The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.

Continue Reading

U.S. Federal Courts

Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections

Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent

Published

on

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Screen capture: YouTube)

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.

While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.

The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.

Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.

Continue Reading

The White House

Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality

President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates

Published

on

President Donald Trump with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on May 13, 2025. (Photo courtesy of the White House's X page)

Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.

Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.

“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”

Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”

“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.

The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)

A beach in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Oct. 3, 2024. Consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized in the country that President Donald Trump visited last week. (Washington Blade photo by Michael K. Lavers)

Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.

The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”

Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.

Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.

Continue Reading

Popular