In a lawsuit filed against Children’s Hospital Colorado, the American Civil Liberties Union alleges the hospital is violating a non-discrimination law because it did not provide a sex-change mastectomy for a female patient.
The female-patient-turned-ACLU-plaintiff is identified in the lawsuit as Caden Kent, 18. She has been under the hospital’s care since age 16 and now wants her breasts removed so she can better identify as a man.
Sarah Parshall Perry, a legal expert at The Heritage Foundation, tells AFN nobody should be surprised the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act is being cited by the ACLU to force a hospital to perform a transgender-related surgery against its will.
“The possibility exists,” she says, “that if one of those hospitals – in a state with that kind of a law – doesn't want to provide these sorts of treatments, they could find themselves on the front end of a lawsuit.”
Children’s Hospital Colorado, headquartered in Aurora, has approximately 600 beds in four hospital locations as well as a pediatric trauma unit.
The hospital network also has a liberal medical policy for transgender youths, including puberty blockers and hormone therapy, but CHS announced last summer it would no longer perform body-altering surgeries on patients.
According to the ACLU, its female client was scheduled for that surgery before CHS changed its policy and dropped the transgender surgeries.
State law has some history
The state anti-discrimination law cited in the ACLU lawsuit is the same one used to target Jack Phillips, the Christian baker who refused to design a same-sex wedding cake.
The state law was also successfully challenged in a more recent legal case involving Lori Smith, the Christian owner of a website business named 303 Creative. Smith's lawsuit resulted in a landmark 6-3 ruling in 2023 in her favor.
According to Perry, she predicts the ACLU would lose its case if it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court because the high court ruled in favor of Smith in its 303 Creative ruling.
“The Supreme Court has already made clear,” she tells AFN, “that in a battle between the Constitution and civil rights protections under state law, the Constitution has to win.”
