We Won A Skirmish

We won a settlement against a hospital that wouldn’t cover a trans person's healthcare.

Dignity Health, transgender employee settle discrimination suit
SF Gate
By Bob Egelko
April 28, 2017

A lawsuit by a transgender employee against Dignity Health hospital chain for denying insurance coverage for sex-reassignment surgery and other medical treatment has been settled for $25,000.

The American Civil Liberties Union had represented the employee, Josef Robinson, in a lawsuit contending discrimination based on gender identity violates the federal law against sex discrimination.
[…]
Dignity Health declined to comment. The San Francisco company is the largest private hospital chain in California and the fifth largest in the United States. Formerly an arm of the Catholic Church, it owns 39 hospitals, 24 of them church-affiliated.

Robinson was hired in January 2014 as a nurse at a non-church Dignity hospital, Chandler Regional Medical Center in Arizona. Born female but considering himself male, he underwent a double mastectomy in August 2015 and paid $7,450 because his insurance did not cover it, his lawyers said. He has also paid for hormone therapy.

Religious affiliated hospitals have claimed that they were exempt from non-discrimination laws saying that it infringed upon their religious liberties but they have not been winning in court or with state human rights commissions.

The courts and state human rights commissions have rightfully found that  just because they are owned by religious organizations does not automatically grant them exemption from discrimination laws. They cite that the hospitals are licensed as public hospitals therefore must treat all of the public and follow state non-discrimination laws including their health insurance for their employees.