(DailyAnswer.org) – The Transgender American Veteran Association has sued the Department of Veterans Affairs, demanding that they cover the costs for the sex-change operations for 163,000 veterans identifying as transgender. The lawsuit, filed on January 25th, 2024, follows a letter sent out last November that threatened legal action if the VA would not start paying for sex-change surgeries.
The advocacy group previously petitioned in 2016 for the VA to bring in changes and argues that the VA is excluding trans people from its health benefits, which currently cover transition procedures such as hormone treatment, hair removal, and other medical treatments but not the surgery, which veterans must either fund themselves or pay for with private health insurance.
The move comes two years after VA Secretary Denis McDonough pledged to make adequate care available, and three years after President Joe Biden repealed the military’s ban on transgender service members enacted previously under Donald Trump. The order in January 2021 called for the immediate altering of military records affected by the ban and, allowed transgender people to serve openly in the armed forces, and prohibited any separations, discharges, or denials of either reenlistment or continuation of service.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin argued that anyone physically fit to serve in the military should be allowed to do so. According to the VA, trans people are 2-3 times more likely to serve in the military. A 2022 study found that transgender service members and veterans had worse mental health issues and higher suicide rates than other service members and that drug and alcohol addiction was also more prevalent among transgender veterans.
TAVA member Natalie Kastner claimed to be at greater risk from not receiving surgery than from being an active military service member. In 2022, this led to Kastner to operate on herself without anesthesia or medical training. President of the TAVA Rebekka Eshler said that lives were at stake and that transgender veterans are at risk of ending their own lives until the change comes into effect and the VA funds surgery. A VA spokesman, vowing to serve transgender veterans as they had served their country, said that the change was working its way through the rulemaking process and being thoroughly considered along with the issue’s importance and urgency.
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