No. 19-2569 ___________________________

Stansel Alexander Prowse

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellant

v. Dexter Payne, Director, Arkansas Department of Correction; Rory Griffin, Deputy Director of Health and Corr. Programs, ADC; Bob Parker, Deputy Director of Mental Health & Corr. Programs, ADC

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendants - Appellees ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Pine Bluff ____________

Submitted: September 23, 2020 Filed: January 8, 2021 ____________ Before KELLY, WOLLMAN, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ KELLY, Circuit Judge.

Stansel Alexander Prowse is an inmate in the custody of the Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC). She filed a pro se 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuit claiming that ADC had denied her hormone therapy to treat her diagnosed gender dysphoria,1 in violation of her constitutional rights. Prowse named Wendy Kelley, Rory Griffin, and Robert Parker—prison administrators and members of ADC’s Gender Dysphoria Management and Treatment Committee (collectively, the prison administrators)—as defendants. The district court2 dismissed Prowse’s amended complaint with prejudice for failure to state a claim. She appealed. During oral argument, the parties informed this court—for the first time—that Prowse was in fact already receiving hormone therapy and had been for several months. As a result, we ordered supplemental briefing on whether the case is moot. After considering the parties’ supplemental filings, we are persuaded that Prowse’s request for injunctive relief in the form of hormone therapy is moot.3

A.

Article III of the United States Constitution provides that federal courts may adjudicate only “[c]ases” and “[c]ontroversies.” U.S. Const. art. III, § 2. A case becomes moot, and is therefore no longer a case or controversy, “when the issues presented are no longer live or the parties lack a legally cognizable interest in the

1 Gender dysphoria is “[a] marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least 6 months’ duration, as manifested by at least two of the [enumerated criteria].” AM . PSYCH. ASS’N, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 452 (5th ed. 2013). 2 The Honorable James M. Moody, Jr., United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Arkansas. 3 Even if we assume Prowse has adequately pleaded a request for nominal damages arising from this claim, in addition to her request for injunctive relief, such a request cannot overcome mootness because she sued the prison administrators only in their official capacities. See Kentucky v. Graham, 473 U.S. 159, 169 (1985) (explaining that Eleventh Amendment sovereign immunity protects government officials who are sued only in their official capacities from claims for monetary damages).

-2- outcome.” Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc., 568 U.S. 85, 91 (2013) (quoting Murphy v. Hunt, 455 U.S. 478, 481 (1982) (per curiam)). We have previously held that a case becomes moot “when changed circumstances already provide the requested relief and eliminate the need for court action.” Hillesheim v. Holiday Stationstores, Inc., 903 F.3d 786, 791 (8th Cir. 2018) (cleaned up). This is one such case.

With their supplemental brief, the prison administrators submitted an affidavit from defendant Robert Parker, ADC’s Mental Health Services administrator and member of the Gender Dysphoria Management and Trea