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Judge orders state to cover transition surgery

Judge orders state to cover transition surgery
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A federal judge has ordered the state of Wisconsin and its insurers to pay for transgender transition surgery for its employees.

U.S. District Judge William Conley says there’s no legal reason to exclude medically necessary care for the employees.

University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student Alina Boyden and UW School of Medicine researcher Shannon Andrews filed a lawsuit last year after they were denied treatment their doctors had determined was a necessary part of the gender transitions.

The Journal Sentinel reports the state argued that covering the surgery would insert it into the “business of encouraging surgeries meant to conform peoples’ appearances to their own perceived sex stereotypes.”

Conley called that position “unhinged from reality.”