CV NEWS FEED // A federal appeals court has just ruled that West Virginia and North Carolina’s respective policies barring government-sponsored insurance companies from covering sex-change surgeries are “discriminatory.”
According to an April 29 10 WJAR report, the Fourth US Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond voted 8-6 in the case, which targeted North Carolina’s state employee health plan and West Virginia’s Medicaid for refusing to provide coverage for hormone treatments and sex-change surgeries.
“The coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest,” stated Judge Roger Gregory in the decision.
North Carolina policy bans treatments and studies “leading to or in connection with sex changes or modifications and related care,” according to the report. Similarly, West Virginia bans coverage of sex-change surgeries.
The decision marks the first in the US Court of Appeals’ history to determine whether refusing to provide government-sponsored coverage of this treatment is unlawful.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced his decision to appeal the decision in a statement, declaring: “Decisions like this one, from a court dominated by Obama- and Biden-appointees, cannot stand: we’ll take this up to the Supreme Court and win,”
He continued:
We are confident in the merits of our case: that this is a flawed decision and states have wide discretion to determine what procedures their programs can cover based on cost and other concerns.
Just one single sex-transition surgery can cost tens of thousands of dollars—taxpayers should not be required to pay for these surgeries under Medicaid. Our state should have the ability to determine how to spend our resources to care for the vital medical needs of our citizens.
The North Carolina State Treasurer Dale Folwell’s office wrote in a statement that the decision “is in direct conflict with multiple decisions from other federal appeals courts,” and expressed hope that it would be reversed by the US Supreme Court.
