Tag: trials

Hormones Are a Right

Posted by helenboyd – February 10, 2011

US District (Federal) Judge Clevert struck down a Wisconsin law prohibiting trans people from receiving drugs in prison.

In Wednesday’s order, Clevert found that the law amounts to “deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” because it denies hormone therapy without regard to those needs or doctors’ judgments. He found the law unconstitutional on its face and also in violation of the inmates’ rights to equal protection.

In other words, he made it possible for doctors to decide what is appropriate medical treatment: sanity prevails occasionally.

This is good, good news.

The Good News

Posted by helenboyd – October 4, 2010

Make it Better, a website dedicated to providing LGBTQ youth with how to make their schools safe, features videos by student activists. (Go Danielle!)

MTV releases an iPhone app that helps define what bullying is.

HRC tells Reverend Packer to STFU.

A London man was sentenced to 21 years in jail for killing trans woman Destiny Lauren.

Federal DOMA Section Declared Unconstitutional

Posted by helenboyd – July 8, 2010

Good news, in a states’ rights kind of way:

BOSTON (AP) — A U.S. judge in Boston has ruled that a federal gay marriage ban is unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro on Thursday ruled in favor of gay couples’ rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA…. Tauro agreed, and said the act forces Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.

“The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment. For that reason, the statute is invalid,” Tauro wrote in a ruling in a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley.

Teisha Green’s Murderer Sentenced to Max

Posted by helenboyd – August 18, 2009

Breaking News: Dwight DeLee, convicted of manslaughter and not murder for killing Teisha Green, did get the maximum allowable 25 years in jail today, + 5 years of supervision after his sentence.

Here’s the AP version of the story, & here’s the Essence magazine article about Teisha Green, by her mother.

(h/t to Andy Marra of GLAAD & TLDEF)

GRS: No State Obligation

Posted by helenboyd – July 29, 2009

In an article posted on Law.com today, this news: Federal Judge Says State Not Obligated to Pay for Sex-Change Surgery.

Western District of New York Judge Charles J. Siragusa in Rochester ruled that Morgana Ravenwood’s constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment were not violated by the denial of coverage.

He also refused to order state Health Commissioner Richard F. Daines to rescind 18 N.Y.C.R.R. §505.2(l), the 1998 law prohibiting state Medicaid funding for “care,” “services” or “drugs” related to gender reassignment surgery.

My thought is that it’s all well & good as long as they quit requiring genital surgery for gender marker changes, then.