Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 15:03:37 -0700 From: Clare Howell Subject: IYF-Court Uphold Privacy Rights MEDIA ADVISORY - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Editor: Clare Howell, clare@gpac.org .MURDERED TRANS-WOMAN'S NIECE WILL LOBBY CONGRESS .COURT UPHOLDS TRANSEXUALS' PRIVACY RIGHTS MURDERED TRANS-WOMAN'S NIECE WILL LOBBY CONGRESS ================================================ [New York, NY: 10 Apr 99] "WHEN I SAW DEBBIE'S BODY AT the morgue, every bone in her neck was broken. Her head was so bashed her face was unrecognizable and she had been stabbed 6 times in the chest." Kathy St. Pierre spoke of the 1995 murder of her aunt, trans-woman Debbie Forte. "I'm coming to Lobby Day to talk about my aunt's murder, to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else. My aunt was loved. She was with a lover for 30 years. What happened to her shouldn't happen to a human being." Kathy, an out lesbian since the age of 15, will be talking to Congressmembers from her home state, Massachusetts, about the upcoming Hate Crimes Prevention Act (HCPA) and its impact on people who are gender- different and their loved ones. President Clinton has publicly endorsed HCPA and called for swift passage by Congress. The bill covers people based on their "sexual orientation and real or perceived gender." Said Riki Anne Wilchins, of GenderPAC, "The fact that 'gender' is in the bill in encouraging, but courts in the past have construed it narrowly to mean simply boy and girl. Our job at Lobby Day is to make Congressmembers aware that gender includes gender-different." National Gender Lobby Day will be held in Washington, D.C. from Sunday, 23 May, to Tuesday, 25 May 99. ### COURT UPHOLDS TRANSEXUALS' PRIVACY RIGHTS ========================================= [New York, NY: 12 Apr 99] THE 2ND CIRCUIT U.S. COURT of Appeals declared Friday that transexuals have a constitutional right to maintain medical confidentially and they do not lose that right upon being jailed. The New York Law Review reports that a corrections officer violated transexual woman Dana Kimberly Devilla's right to privacy and subjected her to cruel and unusual punishment when he told others in a Buffalo-area prison that Ms. Devilla was an HIV-positive transexual. "Like HIV status...transexualism is the unusual condition that is likely to provoke an intense desire to preserve one's medical confidentially, as well as hostility and intolerance from others," said Judge D. Jacobs, writing for the majority. He said that the officer's "gratuitous disclosure" of the inmate's transexualism was not "reasonably related to legitimate penological interest, and it therefore violates the inmate's constitutional right to privacy." He added that such a disclosure could place an inmate in "harm's way" and lead to "substantial risk that the inmate would suffer serious harm at the hands of other inmates." Ms. Devilla died of AIDS in 1995 at the age of 36 while her suit was pending. Her estate was substituted as plaintiff. She had been imprisoned for cashing bad checks. ### Subscriptions. Please contact: Subscribe@Gpac.org For prior releases, check the GenderPAC website at: http://www.gpac.org (c) 1999 InYourFace GenderPAC's online news-only service for gender activism.