Is gender reassignment surgery medically necessary? Is failure to provide it to a convicted murderer a violation of the 8th Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment? According to a judge in Indiana the answer is yes. Judge Richard Young ruled last September that an Indiana law preventing the spending of taxpayer money on gender-surgery for inmates was stayed. That meant that convicted murderer serving 55 years in prison for strangling an infant could get the surgery on the taxpayer's dime.
The ruling by federal Judge Richard Young sided with inmate Autumn Cordellionè, who sued in 2023 to reverse a state law denying transgender people certain medical procedures while incarcerated. The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana claimed in a press release at the time that the taxpayer-funded medical services were “necessary and even lifesaving.”
Judge Young's ruling declared that Cordellionè "requires gender-affirming surgery to prevent a risk of serious bodily and psychological harm."
The ACLU argued denying the prisoner a sex change was illegal discrimination.
“The DOC cannot deny necessary treatment to incarcerated people simply on the basis that they are transgender,” Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU Indiana chapter, said last year. “To do so is a form of discrimination.”...
“Gender-affirming care is life-saving care,” Falk continued. “If the legislature can deny a form of healthcare arbitrarily, they could just as easily deny other lifesaving treatments to people who are incarcerated.”
Lifesaving in this case means that the person will kill themselves if the state doesn't give them what they want. This argument that gender affirming care saves lives is possibly by preventing self-harm is the single most common argument in favor of such procedures. In this case the ACLU is just extending it to someone in prison. Autumn Cordellionè, aka Jonathan Richardson made a list of surgeries in prison and that's all it takes.
Among a list of demands prepared by Richardson and presented as evidence in court was a document titled “Surgeries to Reach My Ideal Self.” The first item on the list, the court heard, was a “vagina,” followed by: breast implants, a brow lift, a brow reduction, a tummy tuck, gluteal implants (BBL), a uterus transplant, hair removal, and wigs.
However, during court proceedings Richardson stated that he had amended his demands to two surgeries, an orchiectomy and a penile inversion. In September of 2024, the Indiana Department of Corrections (IDOC) was ordered to arrange the surgeries, but quickly encountered issues as the only provider of “gender affirming” surgery in the state refused to accept incarcerated patients.
An independent psychiatrist "concluded that Richardson was not suffering from gender dysphoria, but instead had 'attention seeking' personality disorders" but the ACLU discounted that. Last week Judge Young concluded the psychic harm done to Richardson by being told no was greater than the financial harm done to the taxpayers.
On March 5, Judge Richard Young ruled that Richardson “has demonstrated that she is suffering irreparable harm and will continue to suffer such harm unless she is provided gender-affirming surgery. When balancing this harm against the harm Defendant would face if preliminary relief were granted, and when the impact of preliminary relief on the public is considered, the court finds that the balance of harms favors the issuance of a preliminary injunction.”
Factors that apparently did not matter here is that Richardson is serving 55 years for strangling an infant.
At first, Richardson claimed he found the baby unresponsive after doing some household chores. But in the next interview, Richardson said the child was being “fussier than usual” and he attempted to throw her up in the air repeatedly in an effort to calm her down. 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.
During a failed appeals hearing, detectives from the case recounted how Richardson “physically showed” how he had manhandled the girl, getting up out of his chair and demonstrating the action in a rough manner.
An autopsy subsequently found that the baby had died of asphyxiation by manual strangulation.
Richardson was booked awaiting a court hearing, and would later tell a prison official “all I know is I killed the little f***ing bitch.”
I get it. There's not a sliding scale of civil rights for murderous dirtbags but bending over backwards and undoing state law to make sure this freak doesn't self-harm should embarrass everyone involved. Also I think there's some evidence that Richardson is just working the system. He recently filed another lawsuit over his "eclectic" religious beliefs.
In February, the inmate launched a separate lawsuit after a prison chaplain allegedly prohibited her from wearing a hijab outside her bed quarters.
Cordellionè allegedly informed the chaplain “I am an eclectic practitioner who is a member of the Theosophical Society in America." She went on, noting "I practice a diversity of faiths in order to custom tailor my spiritual beliefs to my spiritual needs," according to the complaint.
Richardson is dabbling in religion the way he is dabbling in gender. He's Muslim every 2nd Tuesday and switches to Buddhism on the weekends. Once he gets bottom surgery he may decide to switch back. If so, taxpayers will be on the hook again for as many rounds of genital deformation as needed to keep this child-strangling fragile flower from harm.
