Michigan was not required to pay for a prisoner’s sex change operation, according to a decision by state Attorney General Frank Kelley on April 27, 1976.
A query had come from state Department of Corrections Director Perry Johnson about inmate James Silva, who was serving 25-50 years for assault with intent to commit armed robbery and was up for parole in January 1981. Johnson called it “an unprecedented case” for his department.
According to a psychiatric consultant’s report, Silva, who preferred the name Sherry and once tried to self-mutilate, fit all the criteria of a transsexual. He “believes that he is the opposite sex mentally from what his body is,” devoted most of his time in the previous two years to finding out where he could have gender reassignment surgery after prison, and “has done everything he can to assume the trappings of a female,” such as wearing women’s shoes, plucking his eyebrows, wearing lipstick and “using a higher, more feminine tone of voice.”
In Kelley’s decision, he wrote that inmates have a constitutional right to essential medical treatment, but that “the treatment requested cannot be considered essential medical treatment.”
For the full article, see Zlati Meyer, “This week in Michigan history: A decision on who pays for inmate’s sex-change surgery”, Detroit Free Press, April 27, 2014.