Trans News Friday: Courts, Coverage, and Privacy
Close to home, Oregon spent Thursday in a federal appeals court arguing against an order meant to stop the state from defaulting trans women into men's prisons. In Sacramento, lawmakers scrambled for emergency money after advocates learned the state budget won't keep trans kids' Medi-Cal care going past Oct. 13, and in New York, another federal court told the Justice Department it still can't have trans patients' medical records. Here's the week.
Oregon Asks Appeals Court to Toss Order Protecting Trans Women in Its Prisons
Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Oregon's only women's prison. Photo: Twelvizm via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
On Thursday, Aug. 27, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard Oregon's challenge to an April order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark D. Clarke. That order told the Oregon Department of Corrections to house trans women in facilities that match their gender identity, after a safety assessment, instead of placing them in men's prisons by default. Clarke pointed to a number that should stop everyone cold: 94% of the 123 known trans women in Oregon prisons are held in men's facilities. “It is undisputed in the record before the Court that this default presumption, and their overwhelming placement in men’s prisons, has exposed transgender women inmates to a high risk of violence and sexual assault,” he wrote.
The Oregon Department of Justice, the same office that's taken the Trump administration to court over trans health care, called Clarke's order “vague and overbroad.” The panel had already paused it while the appeal plays out, and at Thursday's hearing the judges, all three appointed by President Trump, had far more questions for the plaintiffs' attorney, John Burgess, than for the state. “It’s at least theoretically possible that they didn’t request a transfer because they don’t want to,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke said. Burgess told OPB that losing the order “would be a step backwards in protecting those inmates.” There's no word yet on when the panel will rule.
Oregon calls itself a safe place for trans people, and in a lot of ways it is. It's also the defendant here, arguing against an order a federal judge said was needed to protect trans women from violence. Both things are true, and the people paying for the gap are the ones inside.
California Scrambles to Keep Trans Kids Covered Before Oct. 13
Downtown Sacramento and the Tower Bridge. Photo: Quintin Soloviev via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
Roughly 1,500 trans and gender-nonconforming kids on Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program, could lose puberty blockers, hormones, and related care when the federal Medicaid cutoff takes effect Oct. 13, CalMatters reports. Lawmakers are pushing for an emergency $10 million in the last days of the legislative session to cover the gap. Advocates thought the state had handled this in June. Then they learned Gov. Gavin Newsom's health and budget officials had removed budget language that would have created a separate, state-only Medi-Cal pathway for trans kids. “In the end, not a penny of it is going to backfill Medi-Cal at all,” said Arne Johnson, an organizer with Rainbow Families Action.
Even with the money, the state's Department of Health Care Services says building that separate pathway could take up to a year. “The bigger question is how is California going to ensure that whatever they set up is going to be available on Oct. 13 when these rules go into effect?” asked Laura Sheckler of the California Primary Care Association. One parent told CalMatters that her 15-year-old son, who gives himself testosterone injections every week, would be forced to medically detransition if his care lapses.
Here's why this matters in Portland: Oregon is up against the same deadline with the same question. The Oregon Health Authority's public guidance still says it's reviewing the federal rule and that nothing in OHP coverage has changed yet. California just showed what happens when a state says it supports trans kids but nobody builds the funding pathway in time. Oregon has about six weeks to do better.
Read the full story at CalMatters →
Appeals Court Keeps DOJ Away From Trans New Yorkers’ Medical Records
The Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in Manhattan, home of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Photo: Ken Lund via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
On Aug. 26, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department's request to pause a lower court order that blocks federal prosecutors from getting the identities and sensitive health information of trans young people who got care in New York City. The order was one sentence long, and two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by President Trump.
Here's how it started. In May, NYU Langone got a subpoena issued under the authority of a federal grand jury in Fort Worth, Texas, demanding the identities and health information of every patient it treated for gender dysphoria before age 18, from January 2020 through May 2026. The ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Lambda Legal sued on behalf of three families with trans kids and two trans young adults, and U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla blocked the grab. According to Lambda Legal, at least eight federal district courts had already turned back DOJ's earlier subpoena attempts. DOJ says it disagrees with the ruling and is “reviewing all options.”
“Every family should be able to make healthcare decisions without fear of political interference or exposure,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan of Lambda Legal. A medical chart is a record of care, not a tip line. Courts keep saying so, and that matters for every trans person who's ever filled out an intake form.
Read the full story at Lambda Legal →
This blog is free. The work behind it isn't.
If WERQ TOGETHER serves your community, power us forward.
More This Week
Texas lost one: on Aug. 25, U.S. District Judge David Hittner struck down SB 12, the 2023 law Gov. Greg Abbott touted as a drag ban, for the second time. His advice to anyone offended by these performances was simple: “just don’t go.” Ken Paxton says he'll appeal (Texas Tribune). In Colorado, Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane tossed a lawsuit from a group of conservative-leaning school districts and charter schools that wanted to stop the state from enforcing its gender identity protections against their trans athlete bans, ruling Aug. 26 that they couldn't show they'd been harmed (Chalkbeat). STAT reported that the legal theory behind the federal Medicaid cutoff could be used to deny coverage of other drugs too, upending the expectation that Medicaid covers most prescriptions (STAT). And at an Aug. 24 White House back-to-school event, with schoolchildren making up about half the crowd, President Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon repeated false claims about trans students, and McMahon threatened schools' federal funding over what she called “radical experiments” (PinkNews).
Up north, Canada officially opened Thunderhead, its first national 2SLGBTQI+ monument, in Ottawa on Aug. 21 (LGBT Purge Fund). It honors the people the Canadian government harassed and fired from the military, the RCMP, and the public service during the LGBT Purge, and it was paid for out of the settlement survivors won from that same government. Purges end. The people they targeted outlast them, and now there's a soaring column by the Ottawa River to prove it.
What This Means for Portland
If someone you love is in an Oregon prison, Judge Clarke's order is on hold while the 9th Circuit decides, so nothing has changed inside yet. The Oregon Department of Corrections answers to Gov. Tina Kotek. Call her office at 503-378-4582 and ask why Oregon is fighting this order instead of fixing what the judge found.
On health care, nothing in OHP has changed yet. If your family uses OHP for gender-affirming care, ask your coordinated care organization (CCO) what its plan is for Oct. 13. If you can't get a straight answer, call OHP Client Services at 1-800-273-0557 or the OHA Ombuds Program at 1-877-642-0450. Then ask your legislators and the governor the question California couldn't answer in time: is Oregon's state-only funding pathway ready?
And if you got gender-affirming care as a kid, here or anywhere, it's fair to ask your clinic how it handles subpoenas and records requests. It's your chart. You can ask.
What This Means for Our Work
A prison fight in our own state, a coverage cliff for kids, and a federal hunt for medical records all push people toward the same question: where can I land safely? TRFAN, our emergency relocation program, helps people get here. Safe Haven Home Share connects them with housing alongside people who've got their back. Our Peer Support Services team helps families sort out OHP and coverage questions, alongside partners like Dian’s Well, Folktime, and The Peer Company. And Trans Town PDX is where people find each other once they're here.
Take Action
Get this in your inbox every Friday. Subscribe to the WERQ TOGETHER weekly for trans news, Portland resources, and community updates.
Looking for resources? Trans Oregon has step-by-step guides built by and for trans Oregonians.
Power this work. Every dollar keeps peer support, emergency relocation, and community infrastructure running in Portland.
If You Need Support
Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860
Trevor Project: 1-866-488-7386
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988
For peer support in Portland: Dian’s Well, Folktime, The Peer Company. Peer support from WERQ TOGETHER: get support.
