A district judge has blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to forcibly de-transition and house transgender female inmates in male jails and prisons, calling Trump’s order a violation of Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The judge’s order is the second recent legal ruling in favor of trans inmates who oppose Trump’s order, and it applies to all trans inmates nationwide, The Hill reported.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan, issued his temporary restraining order against Trump’s order after hearing a lawsuit brought by three trans female inmates who were told that they’d be transferred to a male detainment facility as a result of Trump’s order.

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The women argued they were “likely to suffer irreparable harm” under Trump’s order, pointing to various government reports and regulations showing that trans inmates experience significantly elevated risks of physical and sexual violence compared to other inmates when housed with people of the opposite gender.

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The inmates argued that placement in a male penitentiary would exacerbate their gender dysphoria because they would be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower with men, referred to as men, and forced to dress as men.

The inmates also provided an affidavit from a physician explaining the “numerous and severe symptoms” that they could experience once the BOP discontinues providing medical treatment for their gender dysmorphia.

Lamberth noted that Trump’s attorney general and the Bureau of Prisons didn’t disagree with any of the harms that the trans women said they’d face under Trump’s order.

Nevertheless, the BOP argued that the judge’s ruling was premature because the inmates had not yet completed the four-step process to have their complaints addressed by prison officials, the warden, the BOP regional director, and then BOP’s general counsel.

However, Lamberth wrote that an exception to this process exists within the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) of 1996. The act allows inmates to seek relief from courts before completing the four-step process if the process is likely to be a “dead end” with no way to address their concerns.

In this case, the trans women were unlikely to have their concerns addressed by the BOP because Trump’s executive order requires the BOP to detransition the women and transfer them to a male prison facility without exception.

Alternately, the BOP tried to say that the women lacked standing to sue because the BOP had not yet explained the women’s new detainment situation — like whether they’d be housed in high- or low-security facilities or in segregated housing — or what their new medical care would look like under Trump’s order.

But the judge wrote once again that Trump’s executive order requires the BOP to stop providing gender-affirming care and to house the women in a male facility. This, Lamberth wrote, is enough to show that the women’s concerns are legitimate.

Lamberth also wrote that Trump and the BOP’s worries about what negative effect the women might have on other women in a women’s prison are “abstract” — like whether their presence threatens other female inmates’ or prison workers’s safety, security, and privacy — compared to the very real harms the trans women will face if housed with men.

The judge didn’t say whether he agreed that Trump’s order violated the Administrative Procedure Act (a law that requires the president to follow certain rules when making new policy changes) or the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, which states that all people should be treated equally under U.S. law regardless of personal characteristics.

The women were represented by the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization GLAD, and the judge’s order blocked the provisions of Trump’s executive order affecting trans inmates. Lamberth’s restraining order will remain in effect nationwide until the next stage of the women’s case.

Lamberth’s ruling marks the second recent legal ruling against Trump’s transphobic prison order. The first ruling, however, only applied to the lone trans female inmate who filed the challenge.

Justice Department attorney John Robinson said that government data indicates that only 16 of the 1,506 trans female inmates currently in BOP custody are housed in women’s facilities. 

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