The ACLU’s lawsuit seeks to block a state law HB 1569, signed by Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb, which prevents inmates from receiving taxpayer-funded “gender-affirming care” while in prison. The law received widespread criticism from progressive organizations that condemned the Governor’s actions with lengthy, incoherent statements.
The Human Rights Campaign senior counsel, for example, said, “Incarcerated transgender people already face higher rates of discrimination, violence, and harassment, especially when incarcerated. Gender-affirming healthcare is healthcare – healthcare that the state assumes responsibility for when a person is incarcerated. Especially when incarcerated.”
HB 1569 states, “[t]he department [of correction] may not authorize the payment of money, the use of any state resources, or the payment of any federal money administered by the state to provide or facilitate sexual reassignment surgery to an offender patient.” The inmate represented by the ACLU, Jonathan Richardson, who now requests to go by the feminine name, Autumn Cordellioné, was sentenced to 55 years in prison after he brutally murdered an 11-month-old baby. Richardson’s earliest possible release date would be in 2027. The lawsuit refers to 41-year-old Richardson as “an adult transgender female prisoner confined in a male institution within the Indiana Department of Correction,”and makes little mention of the heinous actions that landed him in prison.
In the complaint, the ACLU alleges that HB 1569, which prevents Richardson from receiving a “medically necessary” sex change operation, “violates the Eighth Amendment” — an argument that would mean denying him this surgery constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.”
According to the state’s Department of Corrections records, Richardson murdered his 11-month-old stepdaughter in 2001 in Evansville, Indiana while her mother was at work. Court documents from a failed appeal Richardson filed in 2003 concluded that the infant’s autopsy “showed that [she] died of asphyxiation by manual strangulation.”
During one of several police interviews, Richardson said the infant was acting “fussier than usual” and he ;“attempted to throw her up in the air repeatedly in an effort to calm her down,” according to Reduxx. “He said her ‘head bopped forward and back up in a rough type of a manner,’ and that the child continued to cry so he proceeded to shake her aggressively in an effort to calm her down,”the outlet explained.
Richardson reportedly told a prison official after his attempted appeal failed, “All I know is I killed the little f***ing b***h.”
The ACLU’s complaint claims that Richardson was diagnosed with gender dysphoria while serving time at Branchville Correctional Facility, a men’s prison in Indiana, where he was prescribed “a female hormone and testosterone.” The suit alleges that Richardson suffers from “serious depression and anxiety” as a result of his gender dysphoria, making the sex change operation “medically necessary.”
Trans Hoosiers — incarcerated or not — have a right to access to the medical care they need.
— ACLU of Indiana (@ACLUIndiana) August 28, 2023
Preventing people from accessing medically-necessary care, simply because they are transgender, is unconstitutional discrimination. #SeeYouInCourthttps://t.co/hq8bmMAbTY
The ACLU’s suit continues by referencing WPATH treatment guidelines, which do not advise or require a thorough analysis of a person’s mental health and stability before recommending “gender-affirming” surgeries to patients. The complaint states that Richardson was able to “obtain bars [SIC], panties, make up, and form fitting clothing” to feel more feminine in a male prison.
The office of Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita, responded to the lawsuit, stating “The approximate cost of these surgeries ranges from $10,000 to $150,000.”
“This is not necessary medical treatment – it is an atrocity,” the statement continued. “This should be common sense, which is something the ACLU continuously ignores. We will not back down and will continue to back the rule of law.”
