It’s Against The Law

It's against the law
It was against the law
What the mama saw
It was against the law
Paul Simon: Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard 

A state Supreme Court just ruled that it is against the law for Medicaid not to cover our healthcare…

The Iowa Supreme Court struck down the state's Medicaid ban on transgender surgeries. Here's why.
Des Moines Register
By Courtney Crowder and Luke Nozicka
March 8, 2019

Aiden Vasquez needed more than an hour to collect himself before he could talk about Friday’s Iowa Supreme Court decision ruling that transgender people like himself could use Medicaid funds to pay for transition-related care, including surgeries.
[…]
“They are now finally acknowledging us as human beings,” he said. “They are finally acknowledging that this is not a plastic surgery or about what I look like. This is a matter of life and death.”

The court’s unanimous decision struck down the administrative code governing Medicaid in Iowa that classifies transition-related surgeries as "cosmetic, reconstructive or plastic surgery" and explicitly bans "surgeries for the purpose of sex reassignment."

Wow! It was a unanimous decision.

But the court stopped short of ruling that this was a violation of the equal protection clause in the Iowa Constitution. Polk County Chief District Judge Arthur Gamble held in his June ruling that it did. Christensen said that question wasn't necessary to decide to resolve this case.

Still it was a major ruling and there is another lawsuit in the works, this time in Alaska.

Lawsuit challenges state’s Medicaid policy denying transgender-related health care coverage
Alaska Pubic Media
By Renee Gross
March 7, 2019

“The only reason the state denied it is because of a regulation that said you can’t have any Medicaid treatment for gender dysphoria, no matter what your doctors say,” Davis said.

According to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank that advocates for LGBT equality, Alaska is one of 11 states with a Medicaid program that explicitly excludes transgender health care coverage.

Davis said Alaska’s regulation that prohibits coverage for transgender treatment services under Medicaid violates the equal protection law under the 14th Amendment.

In other states there have been similar rulings in 2016 Minnesota ruled in our favor. Here in Connecticut we have a state law banning discrimination against us and there is a regulation to insure full medical coverage for us.