FIRST ON FOX: Idaho and Indiana filed an amicus brief challenging a federal ruling requiring Alaska to provide sex reassignment surgery for prison inmates in a case that could reshape policy nationwide.

Alaska is appealing the decision to the Ninth Circuit, seeking to overturn a ruling that found denying sex reassignment surgery to a transgender inmate violated the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Twenty-four states now warn that if upheld, the judge’s ruling could force prisons across the country to provide transgender medical procedures.

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said that if the lower judge’s ruling is upheld, it could create a dangerous “precedent.”

“A federal court ordered Alaska to refer a prisoner for sex-change surgery consultation, which threatens to set a precedent that forces other states to provide these procedures using taxpayer dollars,” Labrador said. “Idaho supports Alaska in defending state medical decisions against judicial overreach. The Eighth Amendment ensures basic medical care for prisoners, but it doesn’t require states to provide experimental gender transition surgeries.”

IDAHO AG SAYS SUPREME COURT TRANSGENDER SPORTS CASE DEFIES ‘COMMON SENSE’

Magistrate Judge Matthew Scoble had argued that Alaska acted with “deliberate indifference” when prisoner Emalee Wagoner, who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, was barred from receiving surgery. However, Alaska   Wagoner is currently serving a 40-year prison sentence for sexual abuse of minors.

In a 32-page brief, Labrador, Idaho Solicitor General Michael Zarian, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Solicitor General James Barta rejected the magistrate judge’s argument that the Alaska Department of Corrections is in violation of the Eighth Amendment because the requested medical procedure is not a “minimal civilized measure of life’s necessities,” meaning it is unnecessary. This assertion is based on the fact the operation “is not available to free citizens in half of the Nation.”

Read the brief below. App users: Click here

“The Eighth Amendment stops cruel and unusual punishment. It doesn’t give prisoners the right to demand risky, optional surgeries when doctors and scientists still strongly disagree about whether they’re safe or even helpful,” said Rokita.

“If courts force states to provide these expensive, controversial procedures in one prison, it will open the floodgates everywhere—putting Hoosier taxpayers and families across the country on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars per surgery in virtually every state.” 

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In the brief, the state officials also pointed to a lack of consensus among medical professionals over the efficacy of reassignment surgery in treating those with gender dysphoria. They cited a 2016 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services review of studies on the effectiveness of sex-change surgeries, finding the selected studies “did not demonstrate clinically significant changes or differences in psychometric test results after” surgery.

The amicus brief expressed scrutiny of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, claiming that the organization “has changed its medical guidance to accommodate external political pressure.”

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“Despite WPATH’s insistence on surgeries, nothing in the Eighth Amendment’s text or history allows prisoners to demand whatever medical interventions they desire,” the amicus brief stated. “Nor does anything in its text or history require States to provide risky, controversial medical procedures of uncertain benefit to prisoners.”

Fox News Digital reached out to WPATH and Wagoner’s legal team for comment.

Following Scroble’s ruling in October, Wagoner’s attorney Richard Saenz praised the decision, telling the Alaska Beacon that his client “should not have to continue to wait for the care that the court and her treating doctor and experts have said is medically necessary for her to receive.” 

Saenz told the outlet the ruling will likely affect a relatively small number of transgender people but that it will be significant for them. 

“I think that is so important — that gender dysphoria, which is a medical condition that the department itself recognizes needs treatment, should not be treated in an exceptional way. It should be treated like other medical conditions, and that the treatment that clinical guidelines say are needed, should be followed,” he said.

Newly released images lay bare the devastating impact of the horrific avalanche that barreled down a Lake Tahoe-area mountainside and buried eight mothers alive, in one of the deadliest backcountry disasters in California history.

The haunting photographs, released by the Sierra Avalanche Center, show the scarred slope at Castle Peak where a powerful ‘storm slab’ fractured without warning and roared 400 vertical feet down the mountain. 

The images, together with detailed incident maps and timelines, underscore the sheer force of the snowslide that killed nine skiers and sent shockwaves through the tight-knit Sierra community.

According to the center’s report, a group of 15 backcountry skiers was below Perry’s Peak at around 11:30am on February 17 when the avalanche broke loose on a north to northwest-facing slope at 8,260 feet. 

Classified as ‘large’ on the danger scale, the slide completely buried 12 members of the party.

Three skiers who escaped the clutches of the avalanche and were not buried immediately began digging in a desperate race against time.

They managed to pull out three people before professional rescuers could reach the remote terrain. But the scale of the disaster quickly became apparent.

Search and rescue teams arrived later on Tuesday afternoon, battling high-intensity storm conditions as daylight faded. 

Crews worked into the night, excavating eight of the nine deceased victims while evacuating six survivors under their own power to Frog Lake Huts.

From there, the survivors were transported for medical care, according to the avalanche center’s report.

After the storm subsided, avalanche mitigation operations began on February 20.

Helicopters operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Company were deployed with 5,500-pound, 660-gallon water buckets. 

The buckets were dragged across the slope and used for full-load water drops in multiple areas in an effort to stabilize the fragile snowpack and prevent further slides.

Only after those mitigation efforts could rescuers safely continue.

Five additional bodies were recovered, and another buried victim was located before nightfall. 

Rescue operations concluded on Saturday February 21 with the retrieval of the final four victims.

The guiding company leading the tour, Blackbird Mountain Guides, confirmed what it called the ‘devastating loss’ of three of its guides: Andrew Alissandratos, Niki Choo and Mike Henry.

Six mothers, part of a close-knit group of friends, were also among the dead: Carrie Atkin, Kate Morse, Danielle Keatley, Kate Vitt, and sisters Caroline Sekar and Liz Claubaugh. 

All six were experienced backcountry skiers and knew how to navigate the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada mountains, their families said in a joint statement honoring the women.

The words remembered them as devoted parents and friends whose bond extended from their families to the mountains they loved.

The six ‘extraordinary women’ lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, Idaho and near Lake Tahoe. The mothers had ‘connected through the love of the outdoors,’ the statement said.

Atkin, 46, ran a leadership coaching business and had a storied career in the Bay Area before she and her husband moved their family to the Sierra Nevada mountains to live out their ‘dream life.’

Morse, 45, was a mother to two daughters and one son, and most recently served as vice president of commercial strategy at Septerna, a Bay Area-based biotechnology company.

Keatley, 44, also lived in the Bay Area and ran a natural winemaking business alongside her husband Dave, whom she first met at a vineyard in Napa. 

Vitt, 43, a SiriusXM executive and mother-of-two was the first avalanche victim to be named. A neighbor said she was ‘lovely’ and had ‘verve and zest for life.’ 

Sekar, 45, and Clabaugh, 52, were sisters. Sekar was a mother of two who lived in San Francisco and Clabaugh worked for St. Luke’s Health System in Boise, Idaho.

The Nevada County Sheriff’s Office publicly identified all nine victims as mourners gathered for a vigil in downtown Truckee, where candles flickered in the winter air and grieving loved ones embraced.

Of the six survivors, only one has been publicly identified: Jim Hamilton. He was rescued nearly six hours after the avalanche struck.

His wife, Beth Hamilton, described the agony of waiting in a Facebook post: ‘I thought I had lost you forever,’ she wrote. ‘The not knowing whether you survived was a pain I cannot put into words.’

The 15 skiers began their three-day trip just as warnings about the storm were intensifying. They had spent the weekend staying along Frog Lake in high country huts accessible only by challenging trails.

The Sierra Avalanche Center had issued an avalanche watch on the morning of the first day of the trip, indicating a high risk of large avalanches. The tour company’s website says the trek was intended for intermediate to expert skiers.

The four guides were employed by Blackbird Mountain Guides, which offers mountaineering and backcountry ski trips as well as safety courses.

Blackbird Mountain Guides said in a statement that it launched an investigation and was mourning the loss of three of its guides.

The guides with the group were trained or certified in backcountry skiing, and were instructors with the American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education. 

What the guides and their tour company knew about the warnings and risks from a powerful winter storm that blasted the mountains during the trip and why they pressed on is now part of investigations. 

Nevada County Sheriff Shannan Moon said authorities will investigate why the guides proceeded with the tour despite the forecast.

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, a state agency that regulates workplace safety, is also investigating to determine if the company violated California law.