Transgender Inmate Loses Suit Over Sex Reassignment Surgery

Prison officials are immune from a transgender inmate’s suit to allow her to experience life as a woman while she’s incarcerated before undergoing sex reassignment surgery, the Seventh Circuit said Aug. 19.

Nicole Rose Campbell didn’t show that it was clearly established that the Eighth Amendment protected her, the opinion by Judge Diane S. Sykes said.

Prison officials were treating Campbell’s gender dysphoria with hormone therapy. Medical experts say, however, that before undergoing sex reassignment surgery, a patient should spend a year assuming the identity of the gender they will transition to.

Campbell was in a men’s prison, which would ...