Georgia Department of Corrections officials on Friday sought to dismiss a transgender inmate’s lawsuit, citing new changes in the state’s policies regarding hormone treatments for prisoners.
Pressured by the Justice Department’s intervention last week in the case brought by inmate Ashley Diamond, Georgia officials earlier this week announced they would no longer automatically deny new hormone treatments. Officials also revealed they had begun providing treatments to Diamond.
“The challenged policy has been rescinded and is no longer in force,” Georgia’s Assistant Attorney General Deborah Nolan Gore stated in a legal brief filed Friday.
Gore added that Diamond had been transferred to a “13-person supportive living dorm at Georgia State Prison” designed for prison rape victims. With the changes, Georgia officials urged a federal judge in Macon, Ga. to dismiss Diamond’s lawsuit.
“A challenge to government conduct that has been unambiguously terminated will be moot,” Gore argued in the 32-page brief filed Friday.
David Dinielli, deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law CEnter, said in a statement Friday that “we currently are reviewing the new policy to make certain that it complies with constitutional requirements and that it will ensure improved care for Ashley Diamond and others in her circumstances.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit on Diamond’s behalf, challenging Georgia’s “freeze frame” policy. This locks in place the level of medical treatments provided inmates with gender identity problems. Diamond, though receiving hormone treatments for 17 years, was denied treatment upon incarceration.
Diamond was sentenced to 12 years in prison. After being shuttled among Baldwin State Prison, Jack T. Rutledge State Prison and Valdosta State Prison, Diamond is now at Georgia State Prison, and is scheduled for release in November 2023.
The 5-foot, 10-inch, 150-pound Diamond has also “strongly identified as female” since childhood, attorneys wrote in Diamond’s original complaint.
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