Prism, June 2025
Despite her decades litigating class-action cases, Eleanor Hamburger never saw as much expert testimony as when she brought L.B. et al v. Premera Blue Cross to a district court in Washington state. The lawsuit alleged that health insurance company Premera, which operates in Washington and Alaska, discriminates against transgender minors by denying them coverage for gender-affirming care.
“I’ve been doing class-action work for 30 years and never had a case with the other side hiring seven experts,” Hamburger said. “It was incredibly over-litigated, and the experts were largely people who are affiliated with the effort to exclude trans folks from the health care that they need. That was shocking to me, to see Premera do that.” “It strikes me because some decision-maker within Premera is prejudiced,” Hamburger continued. “It’s bigotry.”
