Summary: Chelsea Manning, who is imprisoned for leaking 750,000 confidential government documents to WikiLeaks, has sued the government because she was not given hormone treatment.
A day after Bradley, the Army intelligence analyst responsible for leaking 750,000 wartime documents to WikiLeaks, the largest breach of classified information in U.S. History, was convicted, he made demands upon the new prison he was assigned to for his 35 year sentence. He is no longer to be called Bradley Manning, but Chelsea Manning, because he has decided he will become a woman. The Army so far has made mild accommodations to this, administrating her with female garments and formally referring to her as Chelsea. However, they have not given her hormone treatment. This is why she has filed a lawsuit, as of Tuesday.
The suit, filed in a district court in Washington, claims, “She brings this action to compel defendants [Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the federal government] to treat her serious medical needs consistent with their obligation under the Constitution.” Lacking such treatment she “will suffer continued pain, depression, and anxiety, and is at an extremely high risk of self-castration and suicidality.”
In other words, our Constitution has established that prisons must foot the bill if prisoners are diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” as Bradley was in 2010. This disorder is described as an identity disorder in which an individual rejects the gender he or she was assigned at birth. In this case, it wasn’t the rejection that Manning hopes to be treated, but his body.
“I requested that the military provide me with a treatment plan consistent with the recognized professional standards of care for trans [gender] health. They quickly evaluated me and informed me that they came up with a proposed treatment plan. However, I have not yet seen their treatment plan, and in over eight months, I have not received any response as to whether the plan will be approved or disapproved, or whether it follows the guidelines of qualified health professionals,” said Manning, as CNN reported.
Manning’s lawyer, Chase Strangio, who works with the ACLU Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender project, said in a statement that “The government continues to deny Ms. Manning’s access to necessary medical treatment for gender dysphoria, without which she will continue to suffer severe psychological harms. Such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
There is no indication yet whether the district court will try the case.
Army officials did respond to Manning’s request to be transferred to a civilian prison, as opposed to the military prison she is at, saying, “No decision to transfer Pvt. Manning to a civilian detention facility has been made,” as Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in May, “and any such decision will, of course, properly balance the soldier’s medical needs with our obligation to ensure she remains behind bars.”