The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed an Idaho prison inmate to continue with gender surgery at state taxpayers’ expense while the lawsuit over the procedure continues.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Justice Elena Kagan gave the order denying Idaho’s request for a stay, without explanation, but noted that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have sided with the state.
Gov. Brad Little (R) had appealed to the Supreme Court in early May to overturn the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that ordered state taxpayer dollars to pay for the gender surgery of Mason Edmo, a 32-year-old man who is serving a sentence for sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy in 2011.
The state also asked for a hold on the Ninth Circuit’s order requiring the surgery at the state’s expense to move forward pending the appeal.
“The Ninth Circuit’s decision goes against the text and original meaning of the Eighth Amendment and contradicts more than four decades of Supreme Court precedent,” Little said when he announced filing the appeal to the high Court. “We will vigorously litigate the Ninth Circuit’s unprecedented ruling at the Supreme Court because the taxpayers of Idaho should not have to pay for a procedure that is not medically necessary.”
Edmo’s surgery is scheduled for July while the Supreme Court weighs whether to hear the state’s appeal, reported CBS2 News and AP.
The surgery is expected to cost Idaho taxpayers between $20,000 and $30,000. Afterward, Edmo would be placed in a women’s prison until his scheduled release in July 2021.
Edmo sued the state three years ago, claiming rejection of his state-funded gender surgery caused him distress.
According to the news report, attorney Lori Rifkin said Edmo was in such distress that he “twice tried to cut off [his] testicles in [his] prison cell.”
However, James Shupe, the man who became the first person to obtain a legal sex designation of “non-binary” and now asserts the transgender lifestyle is a “fraud,” told Breitbart News in comments he believes Edmo’s claims are false.
“The ACLU argues Edmo attempted to castrate himself because is a female trapped in a male body,” Shupe explained. “The truth is its self-hatred of his genitals because of the behaviors they’ve fueled and sexual paraphilias at work. Or in the case of pedophiles, they’re so distressed about the urges to harm others, they’re willing to engage in self-harm or chemical castration to turn off the dangerous urges. Transgenderism works the same way for males.”
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