The ACLU of Georgia works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, & queer people belong everywhere and can live openly and authentically without discrimination, harassment, or violence.
The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. What is now the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project was founded in 1986 and renamed in 2021. Today, the ACLU brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does. In fact, the ACLU has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided — more than any other organization. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our record of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.
The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transgender people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to protect LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.
THOMAS AND CHENEY V GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY HEALTH ET. AL.
In 2022, The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Georgia, and the law firm of King & Spalding has settled a lawsuit with the Georgia Department of Community Health over its categorical exclusion of coverage for gender-affirming surgery in the State of Georgia’s Medicaid program. The settlement in Thomas et al. v. Georgia Department of Community Health et al. means that transgender Georgia Medicaid beneficiaries living with gender dysphoria can now access lifesaving, gender-affirming surgical care.
As part of the settlement, the Georgia Department of Community Health agreed to remove the exclusion for gender-affirming surgery from Georgia Medicaid and, like all other medical care provided in the program, provide the care when it is medically necessary for an individual. It further agreed to adopt benefits and clinical guidelines for the treatment of gender dysphoria, including benefits for gender-affirming surgical care.
While the actual removal of the exclusion from the Georgia Medicaid State Health Plan will take a few months, transgender Georgia Medicaid beneficiaries should now be able to apply for coverage of gender-affirming surgical care through their providers. It is important that either Georgia Medicaid beneficiaries or their providers obtain the clinical guidelines for the treatment of gender dysphoria from Georgia Medicaid to ensure eligibility criteria has been met and all required documentation is submitted.
