A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Bureau of Prisons from enacting President Trump’s executive order to house transgender women with male inmates and stop medical treatment related to gender transitions.
Judge Royce C. Lamberth, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said that three transgender prisoners who brought a suit to stop the order had “straightforwardly demonstrated that irreparable harm will follow” if their request for a restraining order were to be denied. Judge Lamberth was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.
The lawsuit was one of a barrage of legal actions seeking to stop President Trump’s agenda, including several brought on behalf of transgender prisoners, military service members and young people under 19.
The president’s orders have sought to limit government recognition of an individual’s gender to the sex listed on the original birth certificate, bar transgender soldiers from serving in the military and require the Bureau of Prisons to house female transgender prisoners in men’s prisons. Mr. Trump also has called for the halting of any medical treatment to prisoners “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
The president has also issued orders banning the use of federal funds to treat transgender youth or “directly or indirectly” support gender transition for schoolchildren.
The lawsuit at the center of Tuesday’s ruling was filed on behalf of three transgender women who have been housed in women’s facilities and given hormones for gender dysphoria. Under the president’s order, they were facing a transfer to men’s units and the discontinuation of their treatments.
In an earlier, similar lawsuit filed in Massachusetts, an anonymous transgender plaintiff given the pseudonym Maria Moe was granted a temporary restraining order that applies only to her.
The new lawsuit says that the transfers would place the women at high risk of harassment, abuse and sexual assault. Transgender prisoners are at a higher risk of sexual victimization than other prisoners, according to federal data.
In a hearing on Tuesday, lawyers for the government argued that the plaintiffs had not exhausted their administrative remedies and that only the Bureau of Prisons had the authority to decide where prisoners were housed, according to the judge’s order.
But the judge granted the restraining order based on the plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment claims, including a right to be kept safe while incarcerated and to be given adequate medical care.
“Treating transgender women with gender dysphoria as men is known to intensify dysphoria, undermine medical treatment and increase emotional distress, and it can precipitate self-harm,” lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that President Trump’s executive order is sex-based discrimination motivated by an animus against transgender people. It points out that during Mr. Trump’s campaign, he “repeatedly characterized transgender Americans in dehumanizing terms, referring to them as ‘deranged,’ and victims of ‘madness’ and ‘insanity.’”
It also gives a glimpse of some bureaucratic disarray as the Bureau of Prisons has tried to comply with the president’s order. Days after the order was signed, all three women were moved into segregated or special housing with other transgender women and told that their transfer to men’s facilities was imminent. Several days later, they were transferred back into women’s facilities, but still told that they would soon be housed with men, the lawsuit said.
“Sending her to an all-male prison will be the end of her,” a mother and sister of one of the inmates wrote to the prison, according to the lawsuit. They added: “She will get sexually assaulted and even possibly killed for being who she is. She is a citizen designated as a female and deserves protection like any other human.”
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