VIDEO: Jennifer Capasso Discusses Lawsuit Against Memorial Sloan Kettering with HRC President Kelley Robinson

Health Care DiscriminationLGBTQ EqualityCapasso v. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Dec 12

Wardenski P.C. client Jennifer Capasso recently sat down with Kelley Robinson, the President of the Human Rights Campaign, to discuss her civil rights lawsuit against Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (“MSK”) and why she has stepped forward to seek justice.

In the 21-minute interview, Ms. Capasso describes the discrimination she has faced at MSK while receiving treatments for Stage 4 metastatic rectal cancer for the past five years, including being frequently misgendered by hospital providers and staff; learning that surgical staff made derisive and transphobic comments about her during a March 2022 surgery to remove a tumor from her lung; and having the gender marker on her hospital records changed from “F” to “M” without her consent, leading to further mistreatment.

Ms. Capasso emphasized that her experiences at MSK, one of the country’s preeminent cancer centers, were particularly harmful because she had not experienced similar discrimination elsewhere. “That hasn't been my my experience at any other healthcare institution,” she told Robinson. “Everywhere else were actually doing the right thing and were treating me correctly.”

Ms. Capasso explained that she pursued litigation only after MSK refused for over two years to correctly identify her as female and take necessary steps to prevent further mistreatment during her ongoing treatments. “There's no reason to go through the sorts of frankly nightmarish treatments that cancer care has in store for you, and also deal with the type of discrimination that I had to deal with. No, it was just insult to injury almost. It's awful.”

Robinson asked Ms. Capasso why she decided to step forward and bring her lawsuit now. “I have to leave the world better than I found it, right?,” Ms. Capasso said. “I didn't go through everything I went through in my transition and everything else to get disrespected like that at a hospital during my treatment. If I have the opportunity to make it better for those folks who are going to be following my journey on their own journey through the hospital, I want to make it such that they don't have to deal with what I dealt with. I want to make sure that they're not going to face the same challenges and discrimination.”

Wardenski P.C., together with our co-counsel at Correia & Puth, PLLC, are proud to represent Ms. Capasso and commend her bravery for standing up for her civil rights against a powerful health care institution that has not taken those rights seriously.