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A Federal Judge has blocked Trump from transferring trans women to male prisons citing the 8th Amendment which prohibits cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners.
As first reported by the Advocate, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction Monday, halting the implementation of Trump’s Executive Order 14168, which mandates that federal agencies recognize only two sexes—male and female—and requires the Bureau of Prisons to house inmates based solely on their sex assigned at birth. Lamberth had previously issued a temporary restraining order to protect three incarcerated transgender women from imminent transfer. The latest ruling expands that protection to nine additional plaintiffs who, according to court filings, were “rounded up by BOP officials” and told they would be immediately transferred to men’s prisons and have their gender-affirming healthcare terminated.
In his order, Lamberth said that the government had failed to justify its actions. “Summarily removing the possibility of housing the plaintiffs in a women’s facility, when that was determined to be the appropriate facility under the existing constitutional and statutory regime, demonstrates a likelihood of success on the merits of the plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment claim,” he wrote.
The government argued that placing the women in low-security men’s facilities would ensure their safety. But Lamberth rejected that claim, noting that federal reports and prison data confirm that transgender women face “a significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence” when housed in men’s facilities. The government’s attempt to use general statistics to justify the transfers, he wrote, “do not disaggregate assaults against transgender inmates from overall rates of assault.”
