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Transgender women won’t be moved to men’s prisons after judge blocks the Trump administration’s move.
He ruled that the Trump administration’s policy likely violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has blocked the Trump administration from forcibly transferring transgender women in federal custody to men’s prisons, ruling that the move likely violates their constitutional rights and would expose them to serious harm.
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U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction Monday, halting the implementation of Trump’s Executive Order 14168, which mandates that federal agencies recognize only two sexes—male and female—and requires the Bureau of Prisons to house inmates based solely on their sex assigned at birth. Lamberth had previously issued a temporary restraining order to protect three incarcerated transgender women from imminent transfer. The latest ruling expands that protection to nine additional plaintiffs who, according to court filings, were “rounded up by BOP officials” and told they would be immediately transferred to men’s prisons and have their gender-affirming healthcare terminated.
In his order, Lamberth said that the government had failed to justify its actions. “Summarily removing the possibility of housing the plaintiffs in a women’s facility, when that was determined to be the appropriate facility under the existing constitutional and statutory regime, demonstrates a likelihood of success on the merits of the plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment claim,” he wrote.
Related: Trans inmate sues over Trump’s ‘two sexes’ order
The government argued that placing the women in low-security men’s facilities would ensure their safety. But Lamberth rejected that claim, noting that federal reports and prison data confirm that transgender women face “a significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence” when housed in men’s facilities. The government’s attempt to use general statistics to justify the transfers, he wrote, “do not disaggregate assaults against transgender inmates from overall rates of assault.”
The judge also emphasized that the dangers these women faced extended beyond physical violence. The mere act of placing them in a men’s prison, he wrote, “will exacerbate the symptoms of their gender dysphoria, even if they are not subject to physical or sexual violence in their new facility—whether because they will be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower in the company of men, referred to as men, forced to dress as men, or simply because the mere homogeneous presence of men will cause uncomfortable dissonance.”
Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day back in office, has been at the center of a legal and political firestorm. Branded as an effort to “restore biological truth to the federal government,” the sweeping order bars federal recognition of transgender and nonbinary identities, eliminates gender-affirming care in federal prisons and mandates that housing placements be based strictly on sex assigned at birth.
The ruling underscores the growing legal challenges facing the Trump administration as it attempts to dismantle rights and protections for transgender people systematically. The New York Times reports that the Bureau of Prisons has already begun implementing new policies in accordance with Trump’s order, ending gender-affirming medical care for trans inmates, banning the use of preferred pronouns, and prohibiting the purchase of gender-affirming undergarments.
