Transgender Woman Wins Suit

Lambda Legal and Sylvia Rivera Law Project Settle Lawsuit on Behalf of Transgender Youth Denied Appropriate Care in State Custody

As part of the settlement, SRLP and Lambda Legal will work with the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) over five years to evaluate OCFS’s treatment of transgender youth in its custody.

(New York, December 20, 2006)  —  Lambda Legal, Sylvia Rivera Law Project and Deveboise & Plimpton LLP today announce the settlement of a lawsuit on behalf of a transgender youth who was denied appropriate medical treatment and punished for her gender expression in New York juvenile facilities.

Alyssa Rodriguez, now 20 years old, is a transgender woman who was deprived of her prescription hormone medication and punished for her feminine hairstyle and other aspects of her gender expression by the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) while at the Red Hook Residential Center and other New York facilities in 2002–2003. Rodriguez had been on hormone therapy from a young age and experienced both severe health consequences and emotional distress due to withdrawal symptoms after being forced to go without hormone treatment.

"Alyssa is thrilled that OCFS is committed to ensuring that no other transgender youth in its care will have to endure the suffering she did,” said Rudy Estrada, Staff Attorney in Lambda Legal’s Youth in Out-of-Home Care Project...