A federal district judge issued a ruling that a convicted child-killer who claims to be transgender must receive sex change surgery at the “earliest opportunity.”
In a filing from March 5, Judge Richard Young wrote that Autumn Cordellioné, who was born Jonathan Richardson, was seeking “to extend” an injunction for a “second time,” and that Cordellioné’s “motion to renew or extend” was granted, which contravenes a law prohibiting the Indiana Department of Corrections (DOC) from using taxpayer money on sex changes for prisoners, according to Fox News.
Richardson was previously “convicted of reckless homicide of a baby.”
“The court ordered that the Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Correction should be preliminarily enjoined to take all reasonable actions to secure Ms. Cordellioné gender-affirming surgery at the earliest opportunity,” Young wrote. “Ms. Cordellioné seeks to extend the injunction for the second time. For the reasons that follow, her motion to renew or extend preliminary injunction…..is granted.”
The filing states that the “court granted” Cordellioné’s “motion for preliminary injunction,” after concluding that “gender-confirming surgery is a medically necessary treatment option for some individuals with gender dysphoria,” and that Cordellioné “is an individual for whom this procedure is medically necessary.”
Fox News reported the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “first filed the lawsuit against” the IDCO in 2023 “on behalf of Cordellioné.”
The case, now in its second year, involves inmate Autumn Cordellioné’s request for sex reassignment surgery. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) first filed the lawsuit against the Indiana Department of Corrections in 2023 on behalf of Cordellioné, challenging an Indiana law that prohibits the Department of Corrections from using taxpayer funds to cover sex reassignment surgeries for inmates. The ACLU argues the law is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.”
In March 2023, the Indiana Senate voted 38-9 to prevent the IDOC from using taxpayer funds to provide inmates with gender reassignment surgery, while Democrats at the time “questioned why lawmakers are spending time to outlaw a procedure not provided in Indiana prisons,” according to the IndyStar.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) issued a brief in January stating that Indiana’s law “is not ‘sex discrimination’ under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause because it bans sexual reassignment surgeries across the board,” according to Fox News.
In a statement to Fox News Rokita noted that “convicted murders don’t get to demand that taxpayers foot the bill for expensive and controversial sex-change operations.”
Cordellioné previously sued a prison chaplain over not allowing him to wear a hijab, beside in his “immediate sleeping quarters,” a civil lawsuit from November 2023 said, according to the New York Post.
