A Minnesota Department of Corrections transgender inmate will receive nearly $500,000 and a sex change operation following a lawsuit settlement over his reported treatment in prison.

For the first time in the state’s history, Craig Lusk, 57, who transitioned to Christina in 2018, will be transferred to an all-women’s prison, MPR news reported.

Lusk was arrested in 2018 after officers recovered “a total of 697 grams of meth, two digital scales, a large quantity of plastic baggies, and $5,166 in cash,” Reduxx.info reported. Pleading guilty, Lusk began his sentence in 2019 at a men’s facility in Moose Lake, Minnesota. In June 2022, Lusk sued the Department of Corrections for harassment and misgendering him, claiming the prison system violated the state’s Human Rights Act and the Minnesota Constitution. 

Attorney Jess Braverman of Gender Justice told Fox 9 that Lusk was a woman before being incarcerated, but the Department of Corrections failed to treat him as such. 

“Inmates would heckle her, heckle her roommates … call her ‘it,’ that sort of thing,” Braverman said. “And then there were staff who would say things to her, such as, ‘You know, you’re a man in a men’s prison. I’m not going to treat you like a woman. I’m not going to use your proper name and pronouns.'” 

Now the Department of Corrections will be covering the cost of Lusk’s vaginoplasty, according to the lawsuit settlement. It is a procedure whereby “the male external genitalia are partially removed and reconfigured” and the “skin of the penis and scrotum are used to create a vaginal canal and labia,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.

“The DOC is constitutionally obligated to provide medically necessary care for incarcerated people, which includes treatment for gender dysphoria,” said DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell in a release. “Based on the facts of this specific case, the incarcerated person will now have access to the medical care she needs, she deserves, and we have a legal obligation to provide.”

In January, the Minnesota Department of Corrections updated its policy allowing for inmates to be housed in prisons that best fit their “gender identity.”

The policy states that an “incarcerated person who makes a request under this policy may, at any time, choose to identify in an alternate gender identity. The department must then proceed with responding to the request,” the Blaze reported.

Lusk is scheduled to be released from prison on May 24.