Safeguarding Incarcerated Transgender Individuals
On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an Executive Order targeting transgender people by, among other things, requiring transgender women in federal prisons to be housed in men’s facilities regardless of their individual safety needs. The Order also directed the BOP to stop all medically necessary treatment for transgender people in federal prisons. These mandates violate the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment by prohibiting adequate medical care and by subjecting transgender women to a serious risk of sexual violence in male facilities. They also violate federal law, which requires the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to make housing and medical decisions based on individualized assessments of a person’s medical history and safety risks. Federal law expressly allows transgender women to be housed in women’s facilities when appropriate. By imposing a categorical housing policy solely based on birth sex, the Order attempts to override these legal protections and ignores correctional officers’ considered judgments about individual housing placements, putting transgender women at risk of serious harm.
Working with co-counsel GLAD Law and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, we represent several transgender women whom the BOP had previously determined could only be safely housed in women's facilities. After the Order, each woman faced immediate transfer to a men's prison and the sudden loss of critical medical care. For example:
- "Jane," a transgender woman with female anatomy, had lived safely in a minimum security women's facility for years. Days after the Order, she was abruptly moved to a higher security men's facility, strip searched, placed in isolation, and told she would lose access to longtime hormone medication. She was subjected to constant surveillance by male guards—even while showering or using the restroom.
- "Maria" had transitioned long before her incarceration and had spent her entire BOP sentence in women's housing. After the Order, she too was told she would lose her hormone medication and would be transferred to a men's facility.
- "Carla" and "Donna" had previously survived sexual assaults and harassment in men's facilities before the BOP placed them in women's units for their safety. The Order required them to return to facilities the BOP had already deemed unsafe.
In every case, the risk was profound: Without medical care and placed in men's prisons, these women faced extreme vulnerability to harassment, violence, and sexual assault as well as severe exacerbation of gender dysphoria.
We filed federal lawsuits to block the transfers and ensure continued access to medically necessary treatment, arguing that the Order violates the Administrative Procedure Act, the Equal Protection Clause, and the Eighth Amendment. The cases were heard before the same judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The district court agreed that the threatened transfers would cause severe and likely unconstitutional harm. It ordered the BOP to maintain the women's existing housing placements and restore their medical care while the litigation proceeds. The government appealed only the housing ruling, which is fully briefed and argued before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, the district court's orders protecting these women have remained in place for more than a year.
