9th Circuit Upholds Gender Reassignment for Sex Offender in Idaho, Case Appealed to Supreme Court

Today Idaho Governor Brad Little announced that the State of Idaho has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; which ordered the state to provide sex-reassignment surgery and pretreatments to inmate Mason Edmo. The state has also filed to pause the district court’s 2018 ruling which ordered the state to provide the sex-reassignment surgery.

Mason “Adress” Dean Edmo is serving a seven-year sentence in Idaho. He was convicted of raping a 15-year-old boy at a house party in 2012, he is set to be released in July of 2021. Edmo Sued the state of Idaho in 2017, claiming distress because of gender dysphoria.

In December of 2018 U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill went against Edmo’s treating physician’s determination that sex-reassignment surgery wasn’t medically necessary and required that the state of Idaho pay for it. The state appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals. In August of 2019, a panel of judges affirmed Judge Winmill’s original ruling. The state then sought to have a rehearing by the entire Ninth Circuit, this was denied.

Gov. Little feels positive about the appeal to the Supreme Court stating; “I am confident the Supreme Court will find the Ninth Circuit is once again outside the judicial mainstream. I wish to thank Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and his deputies for their work. Our two offices have worked together to defend the taxpayer and the Constitution in this case.” In January of 2019 Little iterated the same sentiment in protecting the taxpayers which can be seen in the video below which is a compilation of news coverage of this case.

In an article by Kiley Crossland that covered this story for World, a Christian news outlet, in 2019 her article states;

“Paul McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has written extensively about his experience pioneering sex-change surgery there. He eventually stopped offering the treatment in the 1970s after finding it offered no significant benefit to patients.

“Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men,” wrote McHugh in a 2015 article for Public Discourse. “All (including Bruce Jenner) become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they ‘identify.’ In that lies their problematic future. When ‘the tumult and shouting dies,’ it proves not easy nor wise to live in a counterfeit sexual garb.”

McHugh argued gender dysphoria is a psychological disorder and “treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction.”

If the Supreme Court decides to hear the case, people from both sides of the political spectrum will be watching to see how the court rules as it would set a precedent in handling state-funded sex-reassignment surgery.