College Professor Sues For Discrimination After Insurance Denies Transition Surgery

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A transgender University of Arizona professor has filed a motion for Class certification for his class action lawsuit claiming that the state healthcare plan in which he is enrolled denied treatment for his gender transition and for the transitions of others on the same plan. According to Dr. Russell Toomey, a professor of family studies and human development, his gender discrimination class action lawsuit should be granted Class certification because it meets the requirements for such claims. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this with Scott Hardy, the President of Top Class Actions.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Nobody likes dealing with health insurance. I mean, that's pretty much been the general theme of politics and American life for about the last 10 years. Nobody likes dealing with insurance. But for some people it's even more of a headache than others and that's the case of a college professor, professor out in Arizona who wanted to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Doctors ordered several procedures that they said were medically necessary only to find out that the insurance decided it wasn't. So instead of the doctor deciding, the insurance company got to make the decision and now there is a lawsuit that is seeking class certification because apparently this is happening to a lot of individuals. Joining me now to explain what's happening is Scott Hardy with top class actions and Scott, you know, this one obviously is dealing with a little bit of discrimination, not a little bit, a lot of discrimination, let's be honest about that. But it is something we do see all the time with insurance, you know, in smaller instances, oh, your doctor said you needed this, but we're going to go against it. We don't want to pay for that and this was a big one. This was a, a transgender professor that was told you need to undergo a hysterectomy. This is medically necessary, but the insurance company says, no.

That's right. I'm an Arizona Wildcat. Growing up in Tucson, you can't help but be an Arizona Wildcat, support them cats and so I actually learned to ride my bike on this campus and then also promptly ran, drove right into a tree. But, you know, that's what happens, for some people. So in this case, the Arizona Wildcats, the university of Arizona is very near and dear to my heart, near and dear to my family and when I read this, it was really sad. You know, you've got someone that is going through the gender reassignment process and of course, part of that if you're going from, what is what you were born as a female and going to male, then that's a hysterectomy. And so the doctors agreed this is part of the process. Let's make sure that we take care of this. You know, this is part of the gender reassignment part.

Let's, let's help you become, get, you know, to the gender that you, that, that, that you are. And unfortunately, as you said it was, it was denied and it seems like a relatively simple surgery, a hysterectomy. But unfortunately that is still a major surgery and the insurance companies, university of Arizona said, well, you know what, we don't think that this is medically necessary. We don't think that you need this to live. And that's really what the decision was made here is, you know, is this discrimination of this person is making the choice to go from female to male? Is this a choice that they have no control over? Is this a, you know, them saying their body is saying this is, this is the way I was born? I was born with some of the wrong things in place. I need to fix that. Is that a voluntary decision?

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