The VA (U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs) is facing a lawsuit over its delay in providing gender confirmation surgery for transgender veterans. The filing of the lawsuit Thursday by the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) seeks to compel a response from the VA to a 2016 petition urging it to provide the surgery, which the organization currently excludes from the medical benefits package it provides to veterans.
The organization provides pre- and post-operative care to transgender veterans, but not confirmation surgeries.
Two and a half years ago, Denis McDonough, Secretary of State for Veteran Affairs, publicly announced that VA would provide gender confirmation surgery. “To date, however, VA has failed to act on the petition or to provide this essential care,” TAVA says, adding that the surgery “dramatically reduces the risks of suicidal ideation, depression, and psychological distress for transgender people who live with gender dysphoria.”
TAVA said it had had enough of the delay. The lawsuit, it said, was intended to make the VA follow through on what it had promised—and so far failed—to do. K.N. McCleary, of the Yale Veterans Legal Services Clinic, likened it to a Medevac helicopter being urgently required to attend to a critically injured soldier, and taking eight hours to do so.