Inmate who sued for gender surgery seeks $2.8M in legal fees
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A former Idaho inmate who became the first person to receive court-ordered gender confirmation surgery after suing the state Department of Correction is asking a judge to order the state to pay more than $2.8 million in attorney fees and other costs associated with the case.
The state has until Nov. 22 to respond to the motion from Adree Edmo, who is no longer in state custody. Gov. Brad Little's office declined to comment on the case because it is still moving forward in court.
Edmo sued the state of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Correction’s health care provider, Corizon Health Inc., in 2017 saying that they violated her Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment by not providing the surgery. Prison doctors had diagnosed Edmo in 2012 with gender dysphoria, a condition in which the dissonance between a person’s gender identity and the gender they were assigned at birth is significant and hurtful. But medical professionals disagreed about whether Edmo needed gender confirmation surgery, leading to the lawsuit.
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Edmo’s legal fight didn’t end after her surgery, however, Whelan noted, it continued until October 2020, when the Supreme Court said it would allow the appellate court ruling to stand without review.
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Courts generally award attorney fees to the winning party based on the “customary amount” an attorney would charge for the work. But in certain cases — such as when the case is considered “undesirable,” or especially complex, or when the attorneys have extensive experience or performed exceptionally well — the court will allow the customary amount of fees to be doubled. Edmo is asking for double the customary amounts in her case.
“Here, nothing about this case was run-of-the mill,” Whelan said. Edmo had no attorney when she started the case, and no Idaho attorneys were willing to take on the case on their own.