Ad claiming Harris supports transition-related care for transgender prisoners needs context

A new ad paid for by former President Donald Trump’s campaign claims Vice President Kamala Harris supports funding gender transition surgeries for all prison inmates and migrants in the United States.

“Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners,” the ad’s narrator says. “Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens. Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Trump made a similar claim during the presidential debate on Sept. 10 in Philadelphia.

“Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this,” Trump said.

Multiple VERIFY readers, including Alan, Jeanne and Patricia, have asked us if these claims are true. 

Does Vice President Kamala Harris support taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for all prisoners and migrants?

The claim that Vice President Kamala Harris currently supports taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for all prisoners and migrants needs context.

Harris supported transition-related care for transgender prisoners in 2019 when she was running for president, but her campaign says this policy is not a part of her current platform.

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A Trump campaign ad claiming that Vice President Kamala Harris currently supports taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for all prison inmates and migrants is lacking context.

In 2019, when then-Sen. Kamala Harris was running for president, she voiced her support for funding transition-related care, including surgery, specifically for transgender prison inmates and migrants being held in immigration detention facilities.

But the Harris campaign told Fox News on Sept. 10 that the vice president is not currently proposing a new policy or running on this platform ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Transition-related care, which is also referred to as gender-affirming care, is life-saving health care for transgender people of all ages, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. Transition-related care can include a range of services, such as mental health care, medical care and social services.

In the U.S., there are more than 2,230 transgender people incarcerated in federal prisons and nearly 5,000 transgender people incarcerated in state prisons, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and a 2020 NBC News report that compiled data from 45 states and Washington, D.C.

Federal and state prisons are required to provide adequate medical care to all prisoners. But transgender inmates often have to advocate for several years or sue to get transition-related care, including surgery, while incarcerated.

In September 2019, then-Sen. Harris, while running for president, filled out the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) all candidate questionnaire. The questionnaire was sent to all Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2020 presidential campaign, according to CNN. Some of the candidates, including Joe Biden, did not respond to the questionnaire.

One of the questions asked the candidates if, as president, they would use “executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care?”

Harris, answered “yes” to the question, and wrote that she supported “policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.”

“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates,” Harris explained.

“Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment,” Harris added.

In 2015, when Harris was serving as California attorney general, the state and the Transgender Law Center reached a landmark settlement to move a transgender inmate to a women’s correctional facility and provide her with transition-related care and surgery. The case led California to become the first state to set standards for transgender inmates to apply to receive state-funded gender transition surgery.

However, before the settlement, Harris defended the California Department of Corrections’ attempts to deny gender transition surgery to transgender prisoners. After facing criticism, Harris told LGBTQ+ news outlets in 2019 that she was obligated as the California attorney general to defend her clients’ positions even when they were opposite of her personal beliefs.

“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,” Harris said in January 2019 during her first news conference after announcing her 2020 presidential run.

Harris added that she “worked behind the scenes to ensure that the [California] Department of Corrections would allow transitioning inmates to receive the medical attention that they required, they needed and deserved.”

An archived version of Harris’ LGBTQ+ platform from her presidential run in 2019 called for reducing the incarceration rate of LGBTQ+ individuals and mentioned seeking alternatives to incarceration to prevent trans individuals from being incarcerated in the first place.

Harris’s platform also supported a “Medicare for All” plan that would guarantee coverage for all medically necessary services, including hormone therapy and gender confirmation surgery for all LGBTQ+ individuals.

When asked about the 2019 questionnaire ahead of the debate on Sept. 10, Harris campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler told Fox News, “That questionnaire is not what she’s proposing, it’s not what she’s running on.”

Harris’ 2024 presidential platform also does not mention gender transition surgeries for prisoners or transgender people at all. But it does say she will fight to pass the Equality Act to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in healthcare, housing, education and more into law as president.

The Harris campaign declined to provide additional comment on this topic beyond what Tyler said in September.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.