Dashir Moore, a transgender man living in Colorado, was denied insurance coverage of chest surgery after already undergoing the procedure. The ACLU has pressed the Colorado Civil Rights Commission to examine the case and filed against Moore’s former employer, reported LGBTQ Nation.
Moore, a Georgia native, moved to Colorado in hopes of being more accepted for his gender identity. Once he arrived, he updated his paperwork to accurately reflect his gender and got a job at InnoSource, Inc.
When Moore told his insurer that he wanted to undergo chest surgery, he was told that they would cover it without any prior authorization. Two days after the surgery, his insurer refused to pay. The mastectomy Moore went through is routinely covered for cisgender women.
According to Moore, the healthcare policy his employer had excluded any medical expenses for “Gender Transition: Treatment, drugs, medicine, services, and supplies for, or leading to, gender transition surgery.”
Moore left his job with $30,000 in medical bills.
“The fact that InnoSource refused to cover any medical treatment for transition-related care made it clear to me that the company that I was working for believed that as a transgender person I was not worthy of equal treatment,” Moore said in a statement. “I no longer felt valued or that the company really cared about me or my success.”
A similar case is being defended in Arizona. Russell Toomey filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of Arizona over similar exclusions in his insurance coverage.