A federal judge last week ordered Florida corrections officials to provide hormone treatments to a transgender woman.

In his 61-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker criticized officials who refused to accommodate Reiyn Keohane, a transgender woman.

Keohane began identifying as female at age 8 and had begun hormone therapy before she was convicted of murder in 2014.

Walker ordered the Florida Department of Corrections to continue providing hormone treatments to Keohane and allow her to wear women's undergarments and have access to female grooming items.

Keohane is serving a 15-year sentence at the all-male Walton Correctional Institution.

In 2016, she sued the Department of Corrections and several prison officials after she was repeatedly denied requests to resume hormone therapy.

In a letter published by the ACLU of Florida, Keohane wrote about her experience as a transgender woman in an all-male prison.

“I have been forced to strip with men, and been slapped and hit for telling the officers in charge of the search that the rules say I must be searched separately,” she wrote. “I have been handcuffed, thrown to the ground, and held down so officers could shave my head. I have been called a punk, a sissy, and a faggot; I have been beaten while handcuffed for asking to see mental health professionals.”

“I have been pepper sprayed in the face because I refused to hand over the 'contraband' bra and panties I had bought from the canteen and still had the receipt for, and forced to go days without any underwear at all after having mine confiscated.”

“I have been denied at every level, told by doctors that I'm not transgender, refused hormone therapy even though I had taken it on the streets, and had to go weeks without being able to shave after being put in confinement for wearing women's clothing or standing up for my rights,” she added.

The corrections department began providing Keohane hormone therapy after she filed her lawsuit.

In his ruling, Walker chided prison officials – whom he accused of ignorance and bigotry – saying that Keohane “was not an animal” and that “Defendant shall treat her with the dignity the Eighth Amendment commands.”

James Esseks, director of the ACLU's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project, called Walker's ruling “the most affirming judicial opinion about transgender people” he's ever read.