Washington — A federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled Tuesday that the federal Bureau of Prisons must continue providing hormone therapy and social accommodations to transgender inmates while they pursue a legal challenge to President Trump’s executive order that sought to restrict access to the treatments.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request for a preliminary injunction sought by three transgender inmates who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and were provided with hormone therapy and certain lifestyle accommodations, such as clothing and hair removal devices, during their incarceration.
The inmates filed their lawsuit after Mr. Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in the White House that kept federal funds from being spent on any medical procedure or treatment meant to confirm an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.
They asked the district court in Washington to block implementation of Mr. Trump’s executive order while their lawsuit proceeds, arguing that the directive and the Bureau of Prison’s actions implementing it violated a federal law that governs the agency rulemaking process, the Administrative Procedure Act.
Lamberth agreed, and ruled that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims under the Administrative Procedure Act. The judge blocked administration officials from enforcing the president’s executive order as it relates to hormone therapy and social accommodations for people in custody of the Bureau of Prisons and directed them to continue providing transgender inmates with gender-affirming care and certain accommodations, as was the bureau’s policy before Mr. Trump took office.
“The import of the opinion is essentially this: Under the APA, the BOP 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,” Lamberth, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote in a 36-page opinion.
The case before Lamberth is one of several brought by transgender inmates in response to Mr. Trump’s executive actions. In the wake of the president’s order regarding gender-affirming care for inmates, the Bureau of Prisons issued memoranda that barred federal dollars from being used to “purchase any items that align with transgender ideology” or provide gender-affirming care for transgender inmates. The bureau also clarified that requests for clothing accommodations will be denied.
The three plaintiffs in the case were in custody of the Bureau of Prisons when the directives were issued and filed their lawsuit in March. They had been prescribed hormone therapy and were approved to receive social accommodations, including undergarments and hygiene products. But on the heels of Mr. Trump’s executive order, they were informed their treatments would be discontinued, though their access to the medical care has since been restored.
The transgender inmates asked the court to issue relief in mid-March and sought to certify a class consisting of all incarcerated people in the Bureau of Prisons’ custody who will be or have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and receive the gender-affirming care targeted by Mr. Trump’s executive order.
Lamberth rejected the Trump administration’s contention that it will suffer a financial burden if required to continue providing certain gender-affirming care to inmates. He noted that the Bureau of Prisons is providing hormone therapy to 600 incarcerated people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
“The only deleterious public effect of the court’s injunction will be to require that, during the pendency of litigation, the BOP will continue to shoulder a certain administrative cost that it has already willingly assumed since the commencement of this action, and that it had voluntary borne for many years prior,” he wrote.
The judge also said that neither the Bureau of Prisons nor Mr. Trump’s executive order provided a “serious explanation” as to why medical treatment for gender dysphoria should be handled differently than other mental health interventions.
“Nothing in the thin record before the court suggests that either the BOP or the president consciously took stock of — much less studied — the potentially debilitating effects that the new policies could have on transgender inmates before the implementing memoranda came into force,” Lamberth found.
The Justice Department is likely to appeal the decision. It is the latest in a slew of rulings from trial court judges that have blocked many aspects of Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda.
