WASHINGTON — A federal judge agreed Tuesday to temporarily block prison officials from transferring three incarcerated transgender women to men’s facilities and terminating their access to hormone therapy under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., granted the inmates’ request for a temporary restraining order. He issued a written ruling several hours after a hearing where a plaintiffs’ attorney argued that Trump’s order discriminates against transgender people and violates their constitutional rights.
The judge is presiding over a lawsuit filed on behalf of three transgender women who were housed in women’s facilities before Trump signed the order on Jan. 20, his first day back in the White House.
On Jan. 26, a federal judge in Boston issued a restraining order in a separate challenge to the same executive order. That order was limited to one transgender woman in a woman’s prison.
Trump’s order requires the federal Bureau of Prisons to ensure that “males are not detained in women’s prisons.” It also requires the bureau to revise its medical care policies so that federal funds aren’t spent “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Justice Department attorney John Robinson said prison officials have “broad discretion” to decide where to place inmates.
Moving the women to a men’s prison would jeopardize their safety and expose them to psychological harm, plaintiffs’ attorneys argued.
Trump’s order would disrupt the plaintiffs’ access to hormone therapy for their gender dysphoria, the distress that a person may feel because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.
Lamberth noted that there are only about 16 transgender women housed in female penitentiaries, including the three plaintiffs who sued in Washington. The judge concluded that “the public interest in seeing the plaintiffs relocated immediately to male facilities is slight at best.”
“Moreover, the balance of the equities and the public interest favor the plaintiffs,” wrote Lamberth, a senior judge who was nominated by then-President Ronald Reagan in 1987.
The plaintiffs, who are identified by pseudonyms in court filings, are represented by attorneys from the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights and Boston-based GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, also known as GLAD Law.
The plaintiffs were housed in women’s units for months or years until January, when they were removed from the general population of women’s prisons and segregated with other transgender women to await transfers to men’s facilities.
“They were terrified at the prospect of these transfers given the serious risk of violence and sexual assault that they face in these men’s facilities,” GLAD attorney Jennifer Levi told the judge.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that Trump’s order violates their clients’ constitutional rights to equal protection of laws and to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
“There is no way to keep these women safe outside of a women’s prison," Levi said. “We are just asking this court to maintain the status quo.”
Robinson said the plaintiffs haven’t been denied any medical care since Trump signed the order. The Bureau of Prisons hasn’t decided where to transfer them yet, he added.
“I don’t want to get out ahead of BOP interpreting this executive order,” Robinson said.
