Some Good News: Judge Blocks Trump’s Order to Send Trans Women to Men’s Prisons

Three women sued the Trump administration, saying that if they’re moved to a men’s facility, they’ll face high risk of sexual violence and could even be killed.

By Kylie Cheung | February 6, 2025 | 11:24am

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Politics

Some Good News: Judge Blocks Trump’s Order to Send Trans Women to Men’s Prisons

In one of Donald Trump’s first moves as president, he signed an executive order attempting to erase trans people. The order claims to “restore biological truth,” and, as part of that order, moves incarcerated trans women to men’s facilities and denies their access to gender transition treatments. Immediately, three incarcerated trans women were removed from the general population of their women’s prison and placed in segregated housing. Despite their and their families’ pleas, they were told by the Federal Bureau of Prisons they would soon be moved to men’s prisons. The women filed a lawsuit to stop their removal, saying that if they’re moved to a men’s facility, they’ll face high risk of sexual violence and could even be killed.

On Tuesday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Bureau from relocating the women to a men’s facility and from denying them gender-affirming care. The ruling states that the three trans women are likely to succeed in their lawsuit, which argues that Trump’s executive order violates the Constitution’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Their lawsuit will apply nationwide and protect other incarcerated trans women.

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U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, further wrote that the Trump administration has been unable to prove that the three trans women pose any danger to incarcerated women. Meanwhile, two of the three plaintiffs say in the lawsuit that they previously experienced sexual assault at men’s prisons before being transferred to a women’s facility. Prisons are already rife with sexual violence, often perpetrated by prison staff, and trans incarcerated people are at substantially higher risk of sexual violence.

According to the Washington Post, family members of one of the plaintiffs wrote to the Bureau that transferring her to a men’s prison would be “the end of her,” adding, “She will get sexually assaulted and even possibly killed for being who she is. She is a citizen designated as a female and deserves protection like any other human. … This could mean life or death and she has not received a death penalty as her sentence.” In response, the Bureau wrote that there was nothing they could do to defy Trump’s order.

Attorneys for the three women have celebrated Lamberth’s ruling as “a relief.” Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, which is representing the plaintiffs, said, “It’s so important that judges are preserving constitutional values in the face of the Trump administration’s naked power grabs.”

According to the Justice Department, about 2,230 trans people live in federal custodial facilities and halfway houses; about two-thirds of them are trans women, but just 16 are in women’s prisons.

The first weeks of Trump’s second presidency have been a deluge of chaos and cruelty in the extreme. But even as the administration takes a sledgehammer to nearly every pillar of government and fundamental right on an hourly basis, many advocates across issues are fighting back. Also this week, another federal judge indefinitely blocked Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented people and temporary foreign visitors. (Because, it should be said, it’s a patently unconstitutional order.) The legal challenges to Trump’s illegal and bigoted executive actions—like his orders attempting to ban trans people from military service, and attempting to ban gender-affirming care for trans people under 19 years old—continue to pour in by the day.