CTA does an about-face on insurance coverage for gender reassignment surgery

Russia Brown is a 28-year-old CTA bus driver born a female who was making the transition to a male, only to have the mass transit agency throw up a roadblock.

After choosing a surgeon and scheduling a date for the breast removal surgery, Brown was informed this fall that the CTA's insurance policy had rejected the claim.

The policy "only covered bilateral mastectomies" for patients diagnosed with cancer.

The CTA did an abrupt about-face spearheaded by a Sept. 26 letter from the ACLU.

Within weeks and without the threat of a lawsuit, the CTA agreed to cover surgeries tied to "gender dysphoria," the medical term for the distress resulting from, what the ACLU letter calls "the incongruence between a person's gender identity and their gender assigned at birth."

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