Kent noted, here and here, the pendency in the en banc First Circuit of a case in which a district court ordered the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to pay the massive costs of sex re-assignment surgery for a convicted murder in its custody. The lower court had ordered Massachusetts to foot the bill, and a divided panel of the appellate court affirmed.
Today, the en banc court reversed, 3-2. Its opinion, which I just found and have not yet read, is here.
With all the modesty due from someone in my unschooled position, I must say I'm relieved. We hear again and again that prison costs are out of control. If the Eighth Amendment requires the taxpayers to foot the bill for exotic procedures like this, then the idea of getting them under control has all but vanished.
I don't doubt, or at least I will assume arguendo, that a person who feels he or she was born into the "wrong" sex has a medically serious problem. But there has to be some rational limit on what the taxpayers are required to do for a person whose own violent criminal choices have put him in the state's custody,
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