Colorado could soon become the first state in the country to operate separate prison units for male inmates who identify as women, pending judge approval of a proposed legal settlement.

The settlement is the proposed resolution of a class-action lawsuit against the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) filed by more than 100 men who identify as women in which the plaintiffs alleged they had been subject to discrimination, harassment, rape, sexual assault, and other violence carried out by guards and out inmates.

Now, a judge will soon rule on a proposed consent decree that could also bring taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries and hormone treatments to the state’s penitentiary, Fox News reports.

The settlement would require all female-identifying males who are currently or have previously been held in CDOC to receive part of a $2.1 million payout, with rewards ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 per affected inmate based on the severity of the alleged assault, discrimination, or harassment.

It would create the “Voluntary Transgender Unit” at the men’s Sterling Correctional Facility adn the “Integration Unit” at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. The decree also “substantially improves the medical and mental health care provided” to plaintiffs and protects them from “cross-gender searches,” gives them access to women’s canteen items, including cosmetics, and requires CDOC to “appropriately identify” transgender-identifying inmates, while offering improved training on transgender issues to CDOC staff, medical and mental health providers, and leadership,” according to court documents obtained by Fox News.

A number of the plaintiffs involved in the case are serving life without parole for homicide and assault, according to the report.

Keith Rivers, who is currently serving a life sentence for a murder he carried out outside a tavern in 1999, came out as transgender in 2004 and has made “numerous requests for surgical treatment for her gender dysphoria,” which have been denied, “and she longs for competent talk therapy related to her gender dysphoria,” the suit alleges.

While Andre Karpierz, who is serving out a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder in the Denver Womens Correctional Facility, began hormone-replacement therapy in 2016 and “continues to suffer from severe depression related to her [gender dysphoria] and has lived in constant fear of being raped in the male facilities.”

A spokesperson for the CDOC said there is no specific timeline on the approval of the consent decree, though the agency expects a decision will happen soon, according to Fox News.

The question of where to house transgender-identifying inmates has loomed large over the country’s prison systems. Advocates for female inmates have said housing male inmates alongside women poses a danger to female inmates. As National Review previously reported, multiple male inmates who identify as women have sexually exploited female inmates at the Washington Corrections Center for Women, which was previously the only exclusively female jail in the state.