The transgender inmate who won a controversial and long fought federal court battle earlier this year that allows her to have a sex change is seeking more than $800,000 from the state in attorneys fees and costs.
In a court filing submitted Thursday by her lawyer, Michelle Lynne Kosilek says she is owed $806,446.25 after she won a federal decision earlier this year to force the Department of Correction to allow her to have a sex change.
In a handwritten affidavit, Kosilek wrote that she is personally owed $698.69 for items including stamps, envelopes and copies paid for out-of-pocket.
“Having prevailed, I am asking the court to order the defendant to reimburse me for my expenses,” Kosilek wrote.
In a separate filing, she requested that Chief Judge Mark Wolf’s order be amended to ensure her electrolysis treatments can continue and that the pronouns used in the ruling be changed from “he” to “she.”
Wolf said that the surgery was a necessary treatment for Kosilek’s gender identity disorder and that by blocking it, state officials were denying her Eighth Amendment rights from cruel and unusual punishment.
Kosilek was convicted for killing her wife in 1990 and is serving a life sentence without parole at a medium security prison in Norfolk. Kosilek has been taking hormones while living in an all-male prison in Norfolk, twice tried to kill herself and also tried to castrate herself.
The DOC is appealing the decision. Dozens of lawmakers urged the state to do so in a letter sent by Republican Senate and House leaders Sen. Bruce Tarr and Rep. Bradley Jones, as well as other Republicans and Democrats.
The affidavit submitted by Kosilek for her costs can be read below:
