EXCLUSIVE: Forced Detransitions ‘Nearly Toppled’ Medical Unit in Georgia Prison During Care Ban
In the midst of a lawsuit, a Georgia prison resumes gender affirming care for trans inmates.
by B Speaks
Editor’s note: Assigned verified the names and identities of sources in the GA prison, but allows broad anonymity for our reporter and their sources due to the inherent dangers of reporting while incarcerated.
The effects of Georgia’s policy of forced detransition for trans prisoners, currently on hold, were disastrous. In one Central Georgia prison, Assigned Media spoke to the manager of the medical unit who painted a picture of ballooning case loads and overwhelmed workers.
“The mental health case load nearly toppled our appointment catalogs daily, because the offenders removed from the hormones were experiencing severe mood swings,” the manager stated. “There was no way to continue the care for other offenders with the influx of needed mental health sessions needed for those taken off the hormone replacement injections.”
The Georgia Department of Corrections policy of removing trans inmates from hormone therapy is currently on pause, and hormone treatment has resumed. In September, a federal judge ordered the GDC to stop tapering patients off hormone therapy, and resume treatment where appropriate for people incarcerated in the state’s prisons, a temporary but consequential victory in a class-action suit brought by transgender inmates. The ruling, issued by Victoria M. Calvert, found that the state’s blanket ban on HRT under Senate Bill 185 likely runs afoul of constitutional protections. Judge Calvert placed immediate limits on the law’s enforcement while the case proceeds.
The reprise has had a tangible impact. Since the continuance of gender affirming care, the medical director told Assigned, “appointment requests have diminished and those with gender affirming care are relatively stabilized at this time.”
In July, the GDC and its contract medical providers began implementing SB 185, which amended state law to bar “state funds or resources” from being used to provide gender-affirming care, including hormone therapies, in correctional settings by notifying some incarcerated people they would be weaned off medication as previously reported.
Five incarcerated people, who represent nearly 300 others, sued the state in August seeking a preliminary injunction to restore treatment and to block enforcement of the law as unconstitutional.
Judge Calvert’s order does two central things: it certified two provisional classes of plaintiffs (those receiving HRT before the law took effect and those who identify as transgender and request evaluation for HRT going forward) and it directed GDC and its medical contractor to “immediately cease tapering hormone therapy doses” and to evaluate requests for HRT on medical, not political, grounds.
In her written opinion the judge emphasized the legal line courts must draw when medical judgments are replaced by other motivations: “When prison officials present expert evidence that they have made a treatment decision based on medical judgment, the Court will ordinarily defer to that reasonable exercise of judgment. But when a prisoner presents evidence that the treatment decision was based on something other than medical judgment ... the prisoner generally prevails.”
For many plaintiffs the order carried urgent, personal meaning. A press release from the plaintiff’s lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights included those perspectives. “I’m bringing this lawsuit because trans people in GDC custody need an advocate, and I know there are people who will take their lives if this law is not blocked,” said plaintiff Isis Benjamin in the complaint and in subsequent press material describing the harms of abrupt cessation.
Benjamin’s declaration details years of prior HRT and the severe mental-health consequences she and others faced when treatment was halted. Assigned Media also independently reported on the consequences for incarcerated trans women in Georgia during the care ban.
Civil-rights lawyers who brought the case argue in filings and public statements that cutting off established, medically-supervised hormone care creates both immediate physical risks and catastrophic mental-health consequences. “We would never allow a state to decide that people in prison with diabetes should be cut off of insulin just because the state didn’t want to pay for it anymore,” said Celine Zhu, a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), one of the firms representing the plaintiffs. “So why would we allow Georgia to cut off medically required care for people with a similarly serious diagnosis of gender dysphoria?”
The order to resume care triggered swift responses along partisan lines. State House Democratic Leader Carolyn Hugley called the decision vindication, saying the measure was “political theater” and that the state should focus on other priorities.
On the other side, Randy Robertson, who sponsored SB 185, suggested he was untroubled by the injunction and pledged to press ahead with the law or a future version if necessary.
Chris Carr, Georgia’s Attorney General, who had defended the statute, vowed to continue the state’s legal fight, saying in August that “Georgia taxpayers should never cover the costs for a prisoner’s sex change. Period. I’ll fight this all the way to the Supreme Court.”
Court filings and medical declarations submitted in the case say roughly 340 people in GDC custody have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and that 107 were receiving HRT as of late June 2025.
The current injunction is preliminary only; Judge Calvert signaled she may consider broader injunctive relief on summary judgment, and the state has already indicated it may seek to appeal. For now, however, the result is operational: correctional medical staff are required to evaluate patients under accepted medical standards and to avoid implementing a policy that categorically denies care because of political or budgetary objections. Legal observers note the ruling follows similar federal court decisions in other states that have rejected categorical bans on gender-affirming care for incarcerated people.
As the case advances, the question will be whether the federal court ultimately concludes that SB 185 is unconstitutional as applied, or whether the state can rewrite or defend its rules in a way that survives judicial review. For the incarcerated people whose lives hinge on hormone therapy, the injunction is a pause, but a critical one, in a highly charged legal and political contest over health care behind bars.
B Speaks is a writer and advocate interested in prison/criminal justice reform, LGBTQ rights, and government/cultural criticism. A graduate of the University of South Carolina, B served as a political strategist and grassroots organizer in Washington D.C. Currently incarcerated in Georgia, B writes to expose and challenge the realities of the carceral system, advocating for justice reform and the voices often left unheard.