A Victory But For How Long

We just won a small victory in the courts, a federal appeals court ruled in our favor for healthcare.

Gender dysphoria covered by disability law, court rules
AP News
By Denise Lavoie
August 24, 2022


A federal ruling that gender dysphoria is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act could help block conservative political efforts to restrict access to gender-affirming care, advocates and experts say.

A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week became the first federal appellate court in the country to find that the 1990 landmark federal law protects transgender people who experience anguish and other symptoms as a result of the disparity between their assigned sex and their gender identity.

The ruling could become a powerful tool to challenge legislation restricting access to medical care and other accommodations for transgender people, including employment and government benefits, advocates said.

“It’s a very important and positive ruling to increase people’s access to gender-affirming care,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality.

This is not the first the disability laws have been used in our favor. A number of state’s courts have ruled that we are protected under a state’s non-discrimination laws under the disability statues, back in 2001 in Massachusetts in the case of Doe v. Yunits as GLAD reported the courts ruled…

GLAD obtained a landmark ruling, in the first reported decision ever in a case brought by a transgender student, that a middle school may not prohibit a transgender student from expressing her female gender identity.  Disciplining a biologically male student for wearing girls’ clothing violates her First Amendment rights of free expression and constitutes sex discrimination.  The Superior Court decision confirms that a school may not exert its authority over a student simply to enforce stereotyped ideas of how boys and girls should look, a ruling that has significant impact for all gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

GLAD brought the case against the Brockton School Department when the school prohibited our client, known in court documents only as Pat Doe, from attending school wearing what the principal considered to be girls’ clothing after nearly two years of disciplinary action against Pat for her choice of clothes.

Many in the trans community hated the decision because were are not disable but I have always said “Any port in a storm.” Many states, including Connecticut define disability as anything listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) so there is a sliver lining or maybe a tarnished silver lining with us being listed in the DSM.

A lower court said no way!

A federal judge granted a motion by the sheriff’s office to dismiss the lawsuit, finding that because the Americans with Disabilities Act excluded “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments,” Williams could not sue under the law.

They were not having any of your argument and the case got appealed.

The ruling is binding in the states covered by the Richmond-based 4th Circuit — Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia — but will inevitably be cited in cases in other states, said Kevin Barry, a law professor at Quinnipiac University

The decision came in the case of a transgender woman who sued the Fairfax County sheriff in Virginia for housing her in a jail with men. The decision is not limited to transgender people challenging jail policies, but also applies broadly to all areas of society covered by disability rights law, including employment, government benefits and services and public accommodations, Barry said.

A three-judge panel of the 4th Circuit reversed that ruling, sending the case back to U.S. District Court. They took a rather novel view of the DSM since the name was changed from "Gender Identity Disorder" to "Gender Dysphoria."

The 4th Circuit panel said in its ruling Aug. 16 that there is a distinction between gender identity disorder and gender dysphoria. The court cited advances in medical understanding that led the American Psychiatric Association to remove gender identity disorder from the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and to add gender dysphoria, defined in the manual as the “clinically significant distress” felt by some transgender people. Symptoms can include intense anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation.

The modern diagnosis of gender dysphoria “affirms that a transgender person’s medical needs are just as deserving of treatment and protection as anyone else’s,” Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote in the majority opinion.

As I said you know darn well that this is going all the was up to the Supreme Court where it will be a crap-shoot.

Wording becomes very important.

I remember the discussion that we had when the Connecticut non-discrimination wording was being decided, take a look at the wording of the Connecticut law,

(21) "Gender identity or expression" means a person's gender-related identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that gender-related identity, appearance or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth, which gender-related identity can be shown by providing evidence including, but not limited to, medical history, care or treatment of the gender-related identity, consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held, part of a person's core identity or not being asserted for an improper purpose.

Nowhere in it do you see the word “transgender” and that was on purpose because definitions change over time. The next thing to notice nowhere does it say that the person needs to have medical intervention and that was done because many trans people cannot afford medical treatment and also nothing says you have to be living full time. The part about “appearance” was to cover crossdressers and drag queens/kings and it was written to broad as to cover non-trans people, “cis-gender” all that is needed to be covered by the law is for the other person to think you are trans.

We want to make sure something like changing the name in the DSM did gut the bill.