Wilbert Williams v. Beverly Kelly ( 2020 )

Case: 18-31066 Document: 00515475748 Page: 1 Date Filed: 07/02/2020
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
United States Court of Appeals
Fifth Circuit
FILED
No. 18-31066 July 2, 2020
Summary Calendar
Lyle W. Cayce
Clerk
WILBERT WILLIAMS, also known as Serenity Izabel Williams,
Plaintiff-Appellant
v.
BEVERLY KELLY, Assistant Warden over treatment; In her individual and
official capacity; CHRIS POLK, Assistant Director of Nurses; In his individual
and official capacity; ROBERT C. TANNER, WARDEN, B. B. RAYBURN
CORRECTIONAL CENTER, In his individual and official capacity; JAMES M.
LEBLANC, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY AND
CORRECTIONS, In his individual and official capacity; TERESA KNIGHT,
Director of Nursing,
Defendants-Appellees
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
USDC No. 2:17-CV-12993
Before KING, GRAVES, and WILLETT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM: *
Wilbert Williams appeals the district court’s dismissal with prejudice of
his claims under the Eighth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause for
* Pursuant to 5TH CIR. R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not
be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5TH
CIR. R. 47.5.4.
Case: 18-31066 Document: 00515475748 Page: 2 Date Filed: 07/02/2020
No. 18-31066
injunctive relief against the defendant Louisiana prison officials requiring
them to provide him with sex reassignment surgery to treat his gender
dysphoria. We affirm.
We do not address Williams’s equal protection claim because it was not
raised on appeal until Williams filed a reply brief. See Yohey v. Collins,
985 F.2d 222, 225 (5th Cir. 1993). Moreover, even if the issue were cognizable,
it would be deemed abandoned because Williams did not brief it meaningfully.
See id. at 224-25.
On de novo review, we conclude that Williams’s Eighth Amendment
claim of deliberate indifference to serious medical needs fails as a matter of
law. See McLin v. Ard, 866 F.3d 682, 688 (5th Cir. 2017); Harris v. Hegmann,
198 F.3d 153, 156 (5th Cir. 1999). Williams asks us to hold that gender
dysphoria is a serious medical condition whose proper treatment consists of
both hormonal therapy and sex reassignment surgery. But that plea is
foreclosed by our recent holding in Gibson v. Collier, 920 F.3d 212, 215 (5th
Cir.), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 653 (2019), that “[a] state does not inflict cruel
and unusual punishment by declining to provide sex reassignment surgery to
a transgender inmate.” Moreover, Williams’s deliberate indifference claim
rings hollow because the defendants once attempted and later offered to correct
his gender dysphoria through hormonal therapy, which he admits is a known
course of treatment. See Banuelos v. McFarland, 41 F.3d 232, 235 (5th Cir.
1995); see also Gobert v. Caldwell, 463 F.3d 339, 346 (5th Cir. 2006).
For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s ruling that Federal Rule
of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) dictates dismissal as a matter of law. See Harris,
198 F.3d at 156. 1
1 The district court’s reasoning turned on Williams’s failure to claim that he had been
medically counseled to have sex reassignment surgery. But the district court did not have the
benefit of our holding in Gibson that declining to provide sex reassignment surgery to an
2
Case: 18-31066 Document: 00515475748 Page: 3 Date Filed: 07/02/2020
No. 18-31066
AFFIRMED; MOTION FOR STAY DENIED.
inmate does not violate the Eighth Amendment. 920 F.3d at 215. We therefore affirm based
on Gibson. See United States v. Ho, 311 F.3d 589, 602 n.12 (5th Cir. 2002) (stating that we
may affirm on any basis supported by the record).
3