BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. (WBOY) – West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced on Thursday afternoon that he is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review the April decision by the Fourth Circuit Court on West Virginia Medicaid providing gender-affirming surgeries .

In his filing with the Supreme Court, Morrisey said West Virginia had one of the highest rates of Medicaid enrollment in the country, with funds for the program hard to come by, as West Virginia stands as one of the poorest states in the nation.

“There’s an effort to try to mandate something that was never envisioned in the first place. A government doesn’t have unlimited resources to spend money on every single item that’s out there, and so that’s the point we’re making today. That the government has to make a series of choices and sometimes difficult choices and this is not something that was covered. The Medicaid program made a rational decision in its process,” said Morrisey.

During the press conference, Morrisey said the success of these surgeries are not consistent. When asked, he did not provide specific statistics. According to Harvard University’s School of Public Health, gender-affirming surgeries were associated with a 42% reduction in psychological distress and a 44% reduction in suicidal ideation.

He did say that there “certainly are certain types of services covered for gender-dysphoria” under Medicaid, outside of surgical care.

“There are a number of services covered for heart disease, for diabetes, and the state is making rational decisions to determine what gets covered and what’s not and it has that prerogative because it’s responsible for the payments of the program, so it’s not engaged in any discrimination or any violation under the Equal Protection clause,“ Morrisey said.

When asked about how many people have undergone the procedure in the state and how much money it has cost, Morrisey said he did not have the data in front of him.

“We can look at it and we can evaluate it, but that’s not the question in this case,” he said.

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Morrisey added that the entity that has the authority to add gender-affirming surgeries to be covered by Medicaid is the legislature, which he said it has not done.

Morrisey filed a similar petition on July 11, urging the Supreme Court to hear West Virginia’s case regarding transgender athletes competing in women’s sports .

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