Inmate Scott Lynn Gibson identifies as a woman and prefers the name Vanessa Lynn. (Credit: Clint Webb / KWTX)

US — Gatesville, Texas. “I’m just a woman trapped in a man’s body,” Scott Lynn Gibson told a local reporter during an interview at Gatesville state prison.

Mr Gibson, who has identified and lived as Vanessa Lynn since the age of 15, was imprisoned after holding up a convenience store in Abilene, his hometown, in 1994. While serving an 18-year sentence on two counts of aggravated robbery, Mr Gibson murdered a fellow inmate and made a deadly assault attempt on a corrections officer. He was sentenced to 20 years for aggravated assault, possession of a deadly weapon and murder.

Already on hormones to achieve a less masculine appearance, the transgender inmate requested that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) have him assessed for gender-affirming surgery by a specialist. The request was denied. According to prison spokesperson Jason Clark, “Offenders cannot have gender reassignment surgery, which would be considered elective, and is not covered under the TDCJ offender health care plan.”

“Having male genitalia it makes me literally sick I’m talking about to the point that I hate my life and it’s an everyday thing,” the inmate complained. He filed a lawsuit against the TDCJ alleging that Texas is violating his Eighth Amendment constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

“I feel like my constitutional rights are being violated because [the TDCJ is] indiscriminately denying us medical care for no reason.” He threatened that if the lawsuit is unsuccessful, “I will go ahead and castrate myself.” The inmate suffers depression, and has a history of self-harm and suicide.

In March 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against Mr Gibson, finding that his case did not meet the standard of “medical care so unconscionable as to fall below society’s minimum standards of decency.”

A state does not inflict cruel and unusual punishment by declining to provide sex reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate. […] Under established precedent, it can be cruel and unusual punishment to deny essential medical care to an inmate. But that does not mean prisons must provide whatever care an inmate wants.

[…] Necessity and efficacy of sex reassignment surgery is a matter of significant disagreement within the medical community. […] [R]espected

medical experts fiercely question whether sex reassignment surgery, rather

than counseling and hormone therapy, is the best treatment for gender

dysphoria.

Circuit Judge James Ho, majority opinion, Gibson v. Collier

Attorney Maxwell S. Kennerly railed against the decision on his law blog Litigation & Trial in a piece entitled, “The Fifth Circuit Abandons The Rule Of Law To Spite A Transgender Inmate.” “Although some people claim ‘trans rights’ are ‘special rights,’ the movement for ‘trans rights’ is really an effort to provide transgender persons the same rights everyone else has,” he argued.

“All the plaintiff wanted in her lawsuit was the same treatment every prisoner is entitled to have under the Constitution, i.e., appropriate treatment for what everyone agreed was a ‘serious medical need.’” He slammed Judge Ho’s majority opinion as “outrageous, an example of the very worst sort of result-driven judicial activism.”

In 2016, The Dallas Morning News noted that the number of Texas inmates who identify as transgender was at an all-time high, with a nearly fivefold increase since 2014.

Mr Gibson, who is scheduled for release in 2031, becomes eligible for parole in 2021.

Read more on this story Central Texas inmate wants state to pay for sex-change surgery

KWTX

GATESVILLE, Texas (KWTX) A Gatesville state prison inmate has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Waco seeking to lift a Texas ban on paying for gender reassignment surgery for prisoners. Gibson v. Collier, No. 16-51148 (5th Cir. 2019)

Justia

A state does not inflict cruel and unusual punishment by declining to provide sex reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate.