COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A transgender prison inmate in Ohio
wants a federal judge to order the state to allow her hormone
treatments to continue, saying she suffered a medical setback including
facial hair growth and depression when the treatments stopped.
Whitney
Lee, whose legal name is still Antione Lee, had undergone continuous
hormone therapy since 1999 until the Department of Rehabilitation and
Correction abruptly halted the treatments in February 2012.
The
state resumed the treatments last month after a judge temporarily
ordered the state to provide them and scheduled a hearing for Thursday
in Columbus.
A prison psychiatrist has determined that Lee lacks
the criteria for gender identity disorder, also known as gender
dysphoria, and that the therapy can’t be justified, according to the
department.
Lee, 36, is housed with men at Mansfield Correctional
Institution, where she is serving a three-year sentence on forgery and
theft charges out of Hamilton County.
Lee had previously received
the treatments at home, in federal prison and in the Hamilton County
Justice Center, according to a request for an emergency order filed by
the Cincinnati-based Ohio Justice & Policy Center. That included
estrogen treatment approved by prison authorities while Lee was
imprisoned in 2009 and 2010, the request said.
Lee has been living as a woman since age 18, the center’s complaint said.
Without
the treatments, Lee lost breast tissue, her voice deepened, her skin
became coarser and she began growing facial hair, among other symptoms,
the request said. She also has grown irritable and angry and was placed
on suicide watch, according to the request.
"Deprivation of hormone treatment wreaks havoc on Ms. Lee’s physical and mental health and puts her
life in danger," it said.
The prisons department has argued that Lee didn’t exhaust the prison grievance procedures and that the
case should be dismissed.
The
agency cited other cases, including that of a Texas inmate, in which
courts have upheld prisons’ decisions not to administer the treatment.
The
state said that even if the state’s medical diagnosis was called into
question, it would be at most an issue of medical malpractice, not a
violation of constitutional rights.
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Andrew Welsh-Huggins can be reached on Twitter at https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
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