A federal district judge in Indiana has once again ordered the state Department of Correction (IDOC) to arrange sex reassignment surgery for a transgender inmate convicted of reckless homicide of a baby, marking the latest development in the ongoing legal saga challenging an Indiana law prohibiting the practice.
The lawsuit, now in its second year, concerns inmate Autumn Cordellioné’s request for sex transition surgery. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) originally sued the Indiana Department of Corrections in 2023 on Cordellioné’s behalf, challenging an Indiana legislation that prevents the Department of Corrections from utilizing taxpayer dollars to pay for inmate sex reassignment surgery. The ACLU claims the law violates the Eighth Amendment’s restriction on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
“The court ordered that the Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction should be preliminarily enjoined to take all reasonable actions to secure Ms. Cordellioné gender-affirming surgery at the earliest opportunity,” Judge Richard Young, a Clinton appointee, wrote in a March 5 filing. “Ms. Cordellioné seeks to extend the injunction for the second time. For the reasons that follow, her motion to renew or extend preliminary injunction… is granted.”
Cordellioné, born Jonathan Richardson, sought another injunction after the previous one imposed in December of last year expired on March 6, according to court documents.
“In its Order granting the motion for preliminary injunction, the court acknowledged that ‘surgery may take time as it will be provided by a surgeon who is not affiliated with either IDOC or its contracted medical provider. It is therefore the court’s intention… to renew this preliminary injunction every 90 days until the surgery is provided,'” the document states.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has been defending the state’s law, and in January he filed a brief in a court of appeals upholding Indiana’s law prohibiting convict sex-change surgeries. The attorney general said that the Eighth Amendment does not obligate the state “to provide experimental treatments generally, and it certainly doesn’t here, when multiple doctors have said this inmate is a poor candidate for surgery,” according to a spokesman.
Reference: Trans inmate in prison for killing baby must get gender surgery at ‘earliest opportunity’: judge