The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that transgender people have the right to seek accommodation and protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act, providing another layer of assistance to those dealing with gender dysphoria, Law.com reports.

In a majority opinion, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee, wrote, “Given Congress’ express instruction that courts construe the [Americans with Disabilities Act] in favor of maximum protection for those with disabilities, we could not adopt an unnecessarily restrictive reading of the ADA.”

Motz wrote that ignoring the medical needs of people with gender dysphoria, the medical condition impacting transgender people, would require the court to “rewrite the statute in two impermissible ways: by penciling a new condition into the list of exclusions, and by erasing Congress’ command to construe the ADA as broadly as the text permits. … We cannot add to the ADA’s list of exclusions when Congress has not chosen to do so itself.”

The case concerns the treatment of a transgender woman who was arrested and placed in the women’s area of a prison in Fairfax County, Virginia.  When guards learned she was transgender, they relocated her to the facility for males.  Once there, she was denied medical treatment and she was subjected to harassment and abuse by the other prisoners as well as guards.

The judgment challenges a 2008 amendment to the ADA, which forbid ADA requirements for people who practice “pedophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments, or other sexual behavior disorders.”  The same addendum notes that an exception to ADA compliance should be made for people with “transvestism [and] transsexualism,” but Motz noted in her opinion that the ADA was broadly written to ensure people who need medical treatment for a condition should be covered and, Motz wrote, that includes the requirements for treatment for transgender people.