Arizona Trans Teen Loses Bid for Medicaid-Covered Chest Surgery

An Arizona transgender teenager lost his bid to require the state’s Medicaid program to pay for chest reconstruction surgeries because he didn’t show a judge’s mandatory injunction denial was “illogical, implausible, or without support,” the Ninth Circuit said Thursday.

John Doe, who sought to represent a class, didn’t convince the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System must take affirmative action and pay for a medical procedure it otherwise excludes, the court said.

Mandatory injunctions go beyond just maintaining the “status quo,” the court said. The standard for granting them thus ...