On Tuesday, a District Judge placed a temporary blockage on Trump’s executive order denying lifesaving gender affirming care to trans people in federal prisons.
The lawsuit, led by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Transgender Law Center, culminated in Senior District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issuing a preliminary injunction against Trump’s January executive order. Trans inmates now have the legal right to gender affirming care, including hormone replacement surgery and any social accommodations. However, the injunction makes no requirement for surgery.
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“This is a critical ruling for our clients and all transgender people in Bureau of Prisons custody,” said Corene Kendrick, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project and one of the attorneys on this case, in a press release.
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“This administration’s cruelty towards transgender people disregards their rights under the Constitution. The denial of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, to people in prison is a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights. We will continue to advocate for the rights of all incarcerated people.”
This lawsuit was a class-action, filed by trans people across New Jersey, Minnesota, and Florida in challenge to Trump’s exclusionary executive orders that target the civil rights of trans people.
Separate lawsuits are additionally filed in opposition to Trump segregating trans women out of women’s prisons.
“Under the APA, the [Bureau of Prisons] may not arbitrarily deprive inmates of medications or other lifestyle accommodations that its own medical staff have deemed to be medically appropriate without considering the implications of that decision,” said Judge Lamberth in his opinion.
Lamberth also hinted at how other judges may rule in future deliberations. “Even if the BOP did support such a decision with the consideration, study, and reasoning that the Administrative Procedure Act requires of it, its freedom of action may nevertheless be constrained by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, but that is a matter better left for another day — whether that be a later stage of litigation, or another case entirely.”
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