A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s administration from denying gender-affirming care to transgender inmates, dealing another blow to the president’s executive order targeting incarcerated trans people.
Ronald Reagan-appointed Judge Royce Lamberth, 81, said Trump’s policy isn’t based on any “reasoned” analysis, adding that “nothing in the thin record” from the government shows that the administration “consciously took stock of — much less studied — the potentially debilitating effects” of stripping trans people of their healthcare.
He also slapped down the government’s arguments that courts should allow Trump to dictate how federal agencies are run by letting the “democratic process” play out after the election. “Democracy is not as simple as the defendants make it sound,” Lamberth wrote.
Just as the president can issue an executive order telling agencies what to do, he must abide by the Administrative Procedure Act that governs how they operate, Lamberth said.
“If democratic self-governance means anything, it means giving effect to all duly enacted laws, including those — like the APA — that were enacted decades ago,” he wrote. “It does not mean blind submission to the whims of the most recent election-victor.”
Tuesday’s ruling is the first among several court orders surrounding Trump’s approach to trans inmates that blocks prison officials from carrying out his executive order altogether.
Trump’s order also ordered trans women from women’s detention centers. Several lawsuits were filed to reverse the move.
Trans women make up only a small fraction of the federal prison population in women’s facilities — approximately 16 people, according to the Department of Justice. More than 2,230 trans inmates in federal facilities are detained in facilities that match their sex at birth, according to court filings.
In his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order denying “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” The policy also blocked trans inmates from buying clothing or commissary items that prison officials claimed are inconsistent with a person’s sex at birth.
Trump’s far-reaching executive orders targeting trans people claim that an ideologically driven movement to “deny the biological reality of sex” has a “corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.”
Plaintiffs include two trans men and a trans woman who were denied hormone therapy as well as items such as chest binders, cosmetics and underwear.
All three plaintiffs were diagnosed with gender dysphoria by Bureau of Prisons physicians, and prescribed hormone therapy, but those treatments were suspended under Trump’s policy.
The loss of hormone therapy for a trans woman who has been prescribed injections since 2016 caused her to experience “anxiety, hopelessness, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation,” according to court filings.
Trans men who were denied ongoing testosterone treatments said they feared their menstrual cycles would return.
Plaintiffs argue Trump’s policy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
In his ruling, Lamberth said trans people receiving hormone treatments “do not seem interested in propagating any particular ‘ideology.’”
Trans inmates rely on those treatments to “lessen the personal anguish caused by their gender dysphoria, a benefit on which they have relied for years” under longstanding Bureau of Prisons policy, according to the judge.
He wrote that the administration did not provide “any serious explanation” why the policy should change, and the executive order doesn’t make “any effort whatsoever” to explain how — as the president includes in the order — gender-affirming care damages “scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, trust in government.”
“This administration’s cruelty towards transgender people disregards their rights under the Constitution,” said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
“No person — incarcerated or not, transgender or not — should have their rights to medically necessary care denied,” added Shawn Thomas Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center.
