Senior Judge Richard L. Young of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana has once again ordered the Indiana Department of Corrections to arrange for a sex change surgery for Autumn Cordellioné, born Jonathan Richardson, who was convicted of reckless homicide of an infant (Photo Credit: FOX News).
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit two years ago on behalf of Cordellioné, arguing that denying him the taxpayer-funded surgery constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Psychologist Kelsey Beers assessed Cordellioné’s eligibility for the surgery, and determined that he was not as his distress was not due to gender dysphoria but antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.
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Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has committed to fighting the ruling.
“Convicted murderers don’t get to demand that taxpayers foot the bill for expensive and controversial sex-change operations,” he wrote on X on Tuesday. “It lacks common sense. We won’t stop defending our state’s ban on using taxpayer funds to provide sex-change surgeries to prisoners.”
Young has a history of other decisions cited by some as judicial activism.
Last year, Young blocked an Indiana law requiring adult websites to take reasonable precautions to verify the age of their users, repeating the arguments of pro-pornography lobbyists in his ruling.
Young has also ruled that a law requiring voters to go to a county election board rather than directly to the courts to petition to keep polling places open for longer was unconstitutional.
In Bowling v. Pence (2014), he ruled that Indiana had to recognize same-sex marriages from other states, and in Baskin v. Bogan (2014) he ruled that Indiana had to perform same-sex marriages, before Obergefell v. Hodges.
He also struck down a law requiring doctors to report abortion complications, claiming that it violated Planned Parenthood’s rights.
Several of these decisions were stayed upon appeal.