Judge: Georgia county can’t deny gender surgery to deputy

By JEFF AMY
Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge has found that a Georgia sheriff’s office was illegally discriminating when it denied gender reassignment surgery to a deputy. U.S. District Judge Marc Treadwell says Houston County cannot exclude surgery for the transgender woman from its health insurance plan. The case involves Sgt. Anna Lange, an investigator in the middle Georgia county. County officials repeatedly refused to pay for her prescribed gender reassignment surgery beginning in 2018. The judge says the U.S. Supreme Court made clear in a 2020 case that treating someone differently because they are transgender violates a 1964 civil rights law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex.