Iowa’s Ban on Transgender Medicaid Coverage Remains Struck Down
metroweekly.comruled in favor of two Iowans –Aiden Vasquez, a transgender man, and Mika Covington, a transgender woman, both Medicaid recipients — who sued after being denied coverage for gender-affirming surgery.In that ruling, Kelly had found that the state’s ban on Medicaid coverage violated a 2007 law amending the Iowa Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination against people based on gender identity.He also ruled that a subsequent law amending the Iowa Civil Rights Act to prohibit Medicaid dollars from being used to pay for gender-affirming treatments — approved on a party-line vote by Republicans and signed into effect by Republican Gov.
Kim Reynolds in 2019 — was also unconstitutional.The state appealed Kelly’s decision, but shortly afterward, the state Department of Health and Human Services agreed to pay Vasquez and Covington’s surgical expenses. “Choices have consequences, and in this case, the appellant’s choices prompt us to dismiss its direct appeal as moot,” Iowa Supreme Court Justice Thomas Waterman wrote on behalf of the court, citing DHS’s actions.
Waterman noted that while the state had asked for a ruling on whether the 2019 Medicaid coverage ban was unconstitutional, the court was declining to rule on the validity of that decision at this time, writing: “We save the constitutional issues for another day, presumably with a better-developed record.”Although the court dismissed the appeal based on DHS’s prior actions, Waterman wrote, on the court’s behalf, that the state had failed to provide evidence or statistics to justify their assertion prohibitions on coverage for gender-affirming care were a cost-saving measure.Waterman also noted that the U.S.
