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A federal court has ruled that transsexual inmates have a constitutional right not to have their transexuality casually disclosed.
The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit - whose law is binding on Vermont, Connecticut, and New York - held that prison officials were wrong to reveal the gender identity and HIV status of Dana Kimberly Devilla, a post-op MTF transsexual.
Devilla had sued prison officials for harassment she allegedly suffered at Albion Correctional Facility in New York. Following her death in 1995, her executor was substituted as plaintiff.
In the court's opinion in Powell v. Schriver, Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote that "the gratuitous disclosure of an inmate's confidential medical information as humor or gossip - the apparent circumstance of the disclosure in this case - is not reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest, and it therefore violates the inmate's constitutional right to privacy."
Devilla, who underwent sex-change operations in 1974, was convicted in 1991 of cashing bad checks. Shortly after she was incarcerated, a corrections officer at Albion told other inmates and staff members that she was both transsexual and HIV-positive. This disclosure, Devilla claimed, made her a target of constant harassment by guards and prisoners.
Judge Jacobs was joined in the groundbreaking opinion by the other members of the panel that heard the case, Judges Ralph K. Winter and James L. Oakes. Oakes, who has long been lauded as a champion of individual rights, has been involved in Vermont law and politics since 1950. After having served as both a state senator and Attorney General for the state of Vermont, he was appointed to the Second Circuit in 1971 by President Nixon. He currently resides in Brattleboro.
