Transgender patients sue Wisconsin for not covering their surgeries

Two transgender Wisconsin residents are suing the state’s health department, alleging discrimination because their desired gender reassignment surgery is not covered by Wisconsin Medicaid.

In the complaint, plaintiffs Cody Flack and Sara Ann Makenzie challenge a 1997 Wisconsin regulation that prohibits the state’s Medicaid program from covering what it refers to as “transsexual surgery.”

The regulation, which is similar to provisions in nine other states, says such surgery is medically unnecessary. The plaintiffs say the regulation “flies in the face” of the medical consensus on gender dysphoria, the “clinically significant distress associated with having a gender identity … that conflicts with the sex one was assigned at birth.”