A district court judge in Minnesota ruled this week that transgender people on Medicaid have the right to gender reassignment surgery, lifting a decade-long statewide ban on transgender surgeries for those on Medicaid. Ramsey County Judge William Leary granted 64-year-old Evan Thomas, who sued the Department of Human Services, the right to have gender reassignment surgery previously denied to him by state law, the Star Tribune reported. Leary rejected the state’s claims that the coverage ban was due to budgetary constraints and that the suit was moot because changes to Medicaid at the federal level would have allowed the surgeries come January. The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU) filed the suit on behalf of Thomas and the advocacy group OutFront Minnesota. The suit alleged that the law discriminated against transgender people because the state’s medical assistance programs refused to pay for procedures such as hysterectomies, mastectomies, vaginoplasty, and phalloplasty for those who were performing the procedures for gender reassignment, but allowed them in other medical instances. Changes made to Obamacare in July allowed gender reassignment surgeries on state Medicaid plans and gave states until January 1 to implement the changes. On July 1, President Obama also lifted the ban