s.1062 was introduced by the suggestion of the former director of corrections. This legislation simply prohibits the department of corrections from paying for operations to change an inmates gender. This is not a current practice, however, s. 1062 may prevent a serious problem in the future. The states that have had inmates sue for a sex-change operation are:
Virginia, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Colorado, California, Idaho
There was one Federal case from a inmate in Mass. He/she/? sued first at the Mass. Dept. of Corrections 11 years ago and then again at the Federal level 2 years ago.
Also, Michigan was one state that saw this as a problem and passed a Sex Change Prevention Act in 2006, similar to s. 1062.
A spokesperson from the transgender community testified at the hearing this morning with the arguments of cruel and unusual punishment and the unconstitutionality of s.1062.
Simply put, the cruelty would be on the taxpayer footing the bill for theses procedures costing 10’s of thousands of dollars. Also, I’ve never been one to check with the local liberal activist judge for permission on every piece of legislation.
If we were to start paying for “Dan” to become “Danielle”, were would we house the inmate? How can we protect the scarce funds of the already least funded department in the U.S.?
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