With Scott Walker Out, Wisconsin Trans Workers Now Covered for Surgery

Wisconsin will now cover gender confirmation surgery for state employees.

Beginning on January 1, the state's Group Insurance Board will cover hormone and gender confirmation surgery after debating the issue for more than two years, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

The board first decided to take such procedures off its exclusions list in 2016, but Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican with a consistently homophobic and transphobic record, demanded the state reverse course.

But a federal judge earlier this year said no legal reason existed to deny surgery coverage to two state employees suing the state, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

While that lawsuit pertained to just those plaintiffs, Judge William Conley suggested a lawsuit demanding all state employees be allowed coverage for surgery would likely succeed.

As that case played out, the Group Insurance Board in August reversed its previous decision and removed its exclusion on the surgeries.

Trans workers celebrated the ruling, and stressed the necessity of surgery in many of their lives.

"It's hard sometimes to just be able to sit with the fact that who I am and what I am isn't in alignment with my body," Wren Logan told Wisconsin Public Radio.

As for Walker, voters tossed him out in the November election, instead electing Democrat Tony Evers, who ran with the strong endorsement of pro-equality groups including the Human Rights Campaign.