VP Harris may continue Biden's torch of championing gender transition surgeries, despite California AG past

Under a Harris presidency, the push to broaden access to gender transition surgeries, as advanced by President Biden, is expected to continue, notwithstanding her earlier decision as California attorney general to reject a similar request from a prison inmate.

When Harris was the California Attorney General from 2011 to 2017, she drew backlash for denying an incarcerated inmate, Michelle Lael-Norsworthy, access to gender transition surgery. Norsworthy was sentenced to 17 years behind bars in 1987 for killing an acquaintance outside a bar.

At the time, Harris' office contended the surgery was not necessary because the prison system was already providing adequate so-called gender-affirming care through hormone therapy and other treatments. In April 2015, however, a federal judge overruled Harris' rejection of the procedure and sided with Norsworthy, stating the surgery was medically necessary to remedy the inmate's psychological suffering.

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Harris later walked back her decision when confronted on the 2019 presidential campaign trail when she was one of the Democratic candidates, saying she takes "full responsibility" for what her office did.

"I was, as you are rightly pointing out, the attorney general of California for two terms, and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent, and I couldn’t fire my clients, and there are unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs," she said at the time during a news conference at Howard University. "And it was an office with a lot of people who would do the work on a daily basis, and do I wish