Article Media
YUBA COUNTY — The ACLU of Northern California today sent a letter to Yuba Community College District and Tri-County Schools Insurance Group calling on them to immediately remove an illegal provision in the district’s employee health care plans that discriminates against transgender people with a blanket-exclusion for gender-affirming care.
Our client Brian Condrey, an English Professor at Yuba College, was refused health care coverage for his daughter Stella, who is transgender. As a result, Condrey spent thousands of dollars so Stella could obtain medically necessary care that had been unlawfully denied to her.
“This was blatantly illegal under California law which explicitly says you can’t discriminate based on gender identity,” said Elizabeth Gill, a Senior Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Northern California and the National ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project. “It’s really distressing that in the year 2019, a public college in California would be engaged in this type of explicit discrimination against transgender people.”
Condrey has been trying since 2017 to get the plan administrator and his employer to remove the illegal exclusion – to no avail.
In the hope of avoiding unnecessary litigation, the ACLU is urging the district and its insurer to remove the unlawful exclusion for gender-affirming care and compensate employees who have been harmed by it.
###
