Department of Corrections Settles with Transgender Inmate - Women's Prison Getting New Resident, And That's Just the Beginning
A Minnesota man who believe he is a woman will spend the rest of his prison sentence in a women’s facility after he successfully sued the state’s Department of Corrections.
A 57-year-old man, who began going by the name Christina Lusk and had breast implants before he was arrested for drug possession and remanded to prison in 2018, will also be paid $495,000 for discrimination and will receive a “gender reassignment” surgery, according to the U.K. Daily Mail.
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Christina Lusk, a transgender inmate who was convicted of felony drug charges in 2018, won a settlement in Minnesota and will be transferred to a woman’s prison, receive a $500,000 payment, and the DOC will provide gender affirming surgery.
Lusk changed his name… pic.twitter.com/KM7ppnsg1p
— 🇺🇸Travis🇺🇸 (@Travis_in_Flint) June 4, 2023
Lusk will soon have a vaginoplasty procedure performed at the expense of taxpayers.
Before the surgery, he will be transferred to a women’s prison in Shakopee, Minnesota.
He had been confined to a men’s facility in Moose Lake where he said he was mistreated.
KMSP-TV reported, Lusk enlisted the services of a legal nonprofit group, Gender Justice.
The group’s legal director Jess Braverman, said in a statement that Lusk was mistreated in the men’s prison by guards and other inmates who refused to recognize his declared gender identity.
“Inmates would heckle her, heckle her roommates… call her ‘it,’ that sort of thing. 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,'” Braverman said in a statement.
Gender Justice sued the state’s corrections department on Lusk’s behalf.
The inmate will be released from prison next year but will spend the remainder of his sentence in the Shakopee women’s facility and will have the surgery during his confinement there.
The Minnesota corrections department said in its own statement that providing Lusk with a vaginoplasty is “medically necessary.”
“The DOC is constitutionally obligated to provide medically necessary care for incarcerated people, which includes treatment for gender dysphoria,” DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell stated.
Schnell added, “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.”
Lusk will be the first self-described transgender inmate in the state to be moved to a different facility after the DOC announced in January that it would take gender identity into account when deciding where to house inmates.
Lusk first filed his lawsuit last year, Minnesota Public Radio reported.
Braverman said at the time that Lusk did not belong in a facility with other males.
“She’s a woman, and suddenly she’s placed in a men’s facility,” Braverman said. “She’s in a locked cell with a number of men, and she’s really exposed to harassment and violence in that setting.”
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