By Bruno Matarazzo Jr.
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
WATERBURY, Conn. — A federal appeals court on Monday reversed a district court judge’s 2023 ruling in a 2-1 decision that found state prison officials are entitled to qualified immunity in a case that involves providing gender-affirming care, including surgery, to a transgender inmate serving a life sentence for a Waterbury murder in 2007.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the case returned to the U.S. District Court in Connecticut, with instructions to grant summary judgement for the defendants, which in this case are officials from the state Department of Correction.
The court’s ruling said that “Inmates have no clearly established rights” to gender-affirming care, though it was not initially clear if the ruling would have any impact on current DOC regulations.
The plaintiff, Veronica-May Clark, 49, formally known as Nicholas Clark, was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2016, seven years after Clark was sentenced to 75 years in prison for the severe beating of Clark’s then-estranged wife and the murder of her partner inside a Waterbury home.
After attempting self castration with a nail clipper, Clark was transferred to a high-security facility for inmates with mental health needs where she repeatedly sought hormone therapy, laser hair removal and a vaginoplasty, according to the decision.
Dr. Gerald Valletta, a prison doctor, initially denied Clark’s request, citing a DOC policy that allowed only continuation of hormone therapy during incarceration, not initiation.
Clark was later evaluated by an outside endocrinologist in 2017, who prescribed hormones and recommended follow-up care. The DOC provided talk therapy, antidepressants and, eventually, hormone treatment. However, lapses and delays in hormone treatment caused her anguish, according to the decision.
Lab work over a several-year period showed her testosterone levels remaining normal for an adult man — and even increasing — despite hormone treatment, the decision noted.
“In July 2018, Clark reported feeling ‘traumatized’ by persisting erections and advancing male pattern baldness — issues Clark attributed to persistently high testosterone levels,” the decision stated.
The appellate court concluded that even if the treatment was inadequate, prison officials did not violate established laws.
“Inmates have no clearly established rights to be treated by gender-dysphoria specialists or to receive specific treatments for gender dysphoria,” Judge Michael H. Park , wrote in the decision.
Park said federal courts have not recognized a constitutional right to specific gender-affirming treatments and cited other cases from the First, Fifth and Tenth circuits that reached similar conclusions.
“Treatment by gender-dysphoria specialists is not such a necessity. And a deprivation of such ‘informed care’ alone cannot support a deliberate-indifference claim,” Park wrote. “This case falls outside the narrow exceptions in our Eighth Amendment cases reserved for obvious and egregious violations or total inaction in the face of unknown hazards.”
A spokesperson for Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, whose office represented the DOC in the case, refused comment on the ruling Monday other than to say they would “defer to the text of the decision.”
Officials at the DOC, too, did not offer specific comment.
” The Department of Correction is refraining from commenting on today’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision until it has had an opportunity to review it thoroughly,” a DOC spokesperson said Monday.
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