US judge blocks Trump from sending transgender women to men’s prisons

The determination marked the 2nd clip that a national justice had sided with LGBTQ ineligible rights groups who sued to forestall the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from implementing the order.

Lamberth’s bid applies to each 16 transgender women presently housed successful national women’s prisons. It goes further than a Jan. 26 determination by a national justice successful Boston blocking situation officials from transferring an idiosyncratic transgender pistillate to a men’s facility.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department, which defended the Trump medication successful court, declined to comment. The Bureau of Prisons did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

The 3 transgender women who brought the Washington, D.C. lawsuit argued transgender women would look unit and intersexual battle successful men’s prisons, which would interruption their close to not beryllium subjected to cruel and antithetic punishment arsenic guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

U.S. Justice Department lawyer John Robinson had argued that the Bureau of Prisons has wide authorization to marque inmate placement decisions.

He urged Lamberth, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, to hold for the bureau to revise its policies earlier issuing immoderate bid compelling the continuation of aesculapian treatment.

In his decision, Lamberth wrote that the authorities did not quality the plaintiffs’ assertion that transgender persons were astatine a higher hazard of carnal and intersexual unit than different inmates erstwhile housed successful a installation corresponding to their biologic sex.

Trump’s enforcement bid directed the national authorities to lone admit two, biologically chiseled sexes, antheral and female; location transgender women successful men’s prisons; and cease backing for immoderate gender-affirming aesculapian attraction for inmates.

Prior to Trump’s order, the Bureau of Prisons had been operating nether guidelines adopted successful 2022 during Democratic erstwhile President Joe Biden’s tenure requiring prisons to see inmates’ “current sex expression” erstwhile deciding wherever to location them.

Biden’s argumentation was a reversal from earlier guidance during Trump’s archetypal term.

The suit filed connected Jan. 30 besides argued that Trump’s enforcement bid discriminates against transgender radical connected the ground of enactment successful usurpation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.

About 2,230 transgender inmates are housed successful national custodial facilities and halfway houses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. About 2 thirds of them, 1,506, are transgender women, astir of whom are housed successful men’s prisons.