One Small Victory

We can use every win we get in today’s political climate.

Yellowstone County discriminated against transgender employee, Human Rights Bureau finds
Billings Gazette
By Rob Rogers
April 3, 2019

Yellowstone County may have discriminated against one of its deputy county attorneys when it denied her access to health care last year.

The Montana Human Rights Bureau said recently that Yellowstone County had unlawfully denied Eleanor Andersen Maloney, a transgender woman, "gender-affirming health care."

Maloney had begun exploring health care options after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria while employed by the county. She was a prosecutor working child abuse and neglect cases.

Maloney resigned from the county attorney's office last summer. She's since moved to western Montana, where she works for a nonprofit organization that provides support and legal help to battered women and children.

Not only did the county deny the payment but they also stabbed a knife in her back and twisted it.

The county denied her request, citing its health insurance plan that excludes "services or supplies related to sexual reassignment and reversal of such procedures."

Citing the same policy, the county also sought a return of payments from Maloney's therapist for the counseling sessions she had received related to gender dysphoria.

But she got the last word, or rather the state did.

In its finding, the Montana Human Rights Bureau wrote that, "if an insurance product carves out medical procedures, relying only on a person's status as transgender as the determinative criterion, this is a distinction based on sex and it violates the Montana Human Rights Act's insurance provision."

This is a huge win not only for Ms. Maloney but also for all the trans people in Montana!

Ms. Maloney in her brief said, “Maloney compares it to changing religions.” In the Schroer v. Billington case the judge said, “The Schroer court held that just as discrimination against converts from one to faith to another is still discrimination based on religion, so too discrimination against transgender persons is still sex discrimination.”