Transgender inmate’s suit upheld

BOISE – A federal judge has declined to dismiss the lawsuit of an inmate who claims the Idaho Department of Correction is failing to treat her for gender identity disorder.

Josephime Von Isaak, who legally changed her name from Augustus Joseph Isaak last year, says she is a male-to-female transsexual who suffers from gender identity disorder. Isaak claims that she was compelled to remove her own testicles with a razor after the state failed to diagnose and treat her disorder. Even then, the lawsuit alleges, Isaak went without the estrogen treatment she wanted, and a year after self-castrating she amputated the tip of her penis.

Isaak claims the state subjected her to cruel and unusual punishment and that prison health workers committed medical malpractice. State and prison health officials deny the claims.

The state is now expected to go to trial in Isaak’s lawsuit and in a similar case brought by inmate Jenniffer Spencer (formerly known as Randall Gammett), who also self-castrated while in prison after officials allegedly refused to treat her gender identity disorder.

A trial date has not yet been set in Isaak’s case. Officials with Correctional Medical Services asked U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill to dismiss or stay the case, saying the medical malpractice claims belonged in state court and that they should be kept separate from the Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim because the legal standards for each claim were dramatically different.

But Winmill disagreed, saying recently that it is within his jurisdiction to keep the entire lawsuit in the federal court system.

Isaak was sentenced to life in prison – eligible for parole only after at least 20 years – after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the 1995 stabbing death of 53-year-old Jack Herridge. The two lived in the same Pocatello apartment complex. Isaak’s case was complicated by mental illness: A diagnosed schizophrenic, Isaak was held for several months before being found mentally competent to stand trial.

Even then Isaak’s gender identity issues were surfacing, with Isaak telling court psychologists that he blamed Herridge for not being able to have a sex change, according to the lawsuit.