The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits public entities from discriminating against any individual with a “disability.” The ADA generally defines “disability,” with respect to an individual, as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual.” But it explicitly excludes from that definition “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments.”

Last summer, the Supreme Court, over the objections of Justices Alito and Thomas, failed to grant review of a rogue Fourth Circuit ruling that eviscerated that exclusion. And the crazies in the Department of Justice are running wild as a result.

In its latest action, DOJ yesterday sued the state of Utah under the ADA for unlawfully discriminating against an unnamed incarcerated “transgender woman”—i.e., a man who says he identifies as a woman. In addition to seeking an award of damages to the prisoner and to any “other aggrieved individuals,” DOJ is seeking broad injunctive relief that would include ordering that the male prisoner be housed with women.

There is nothing in DOJ’s complaint that alleges that the individual’s gender dysphoria “result[s] from physical impairments,” so this is exactly the sort of claim that a sound reading of the ADA exclusion would bar.

According to DOJ’s complaint, the prisoner’s gender dysphoria worsened to the point that he “performed dangerous self-surgery and removed her own testicles.” (Emphasis added.) It is sad and terrible indeed if the poor guy removed his testicles, but DOJ’s butchering of basic biology and the English language doesn’t make it any better.

DOJ obscures its request for an order that the male prisoner be housed with women. Its complaint alleges that the prisoner “sought reasonable modifications including … to individually assess her [sic] housing requests to avoid discrimination on the basis of gender dysphoria.” You have to go to DOJ’s notice of its findings to learn that the prisoner requested that he “be assigned female housing”—and that DOJ determined in its “findings of fact” that Utah “failed to make reasonable modifications to its policies, practices, or procedures for … housing … that Complainant needed to live consistently with her [sic] gender identity.” So DOJ’s request that the court order Utah “to reasonably modify it policies, practices and procedures” for him clearly encompasses his request to “be assigned female housing.”