Why should any employer be forced to cover this sort of thing?
Campus Reform reports:
Employee sues UGA for declining to pay for transition surgeryAn employee of the University of Georgia (UGA), is suing the state’s university system over what he claims are “discriminatory health insurance policies for transgender employees.”Plaintiff Skyler Jay enrolled at UGA in 2009 as a woman and was later hired by the university in 2013. During this time, Jay came out as a man and began the transition process to become a male, including a transition surgery in 2017, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.Jay, who recently appeared in an episode of the Netflix series Queer Eye, says he was refused coverage for a surgery to treat gender dysphoria in May of 2017, and alleges that this amounts to discrimination by the university.According to the publication, Skylar appealed the denial to the insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS), which refused his appeal by noting that the plan is self-insured and provides no room to override the plan exclusion.Jay’s attorneys, however, argue that this transformational surgery is necessary care and that non-trans employees get their necessary medical care covered.Noah Lewis, Jay’s attorney, told the Journal-Constitution that some other institutions of higher education and major companies do not deny coverage for transition surgeries.“The fact that transgender employees are not able to access medically necessary care while non-transgender employees have their medically necessary care covered evidences a disparate impact on a protected class,” Jay’s legal team asserts.
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