Judge orders Trump administration to return two trans prisoners to women’s facilities

A judge on Wednesday ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons (BoP) to transfer two incarcerated transgender women back to federal women’s prisons after they had been sent to men’s facilities after Donald Trump’s executive order that truncated transgender protections.

US district judge Royce Lamberth in Washington DC issued a preliminary injunction after the women were added as plaintiffs in ongoing litigation over the impact of the president’s executive order on trans women in federal prisons.

Lamberth ordered the BoP to “immediately transfer” the two women – identified in court papers by the pseudonyms Rachel and Ellen Doe – back to women’s facilities and said the agency must continue to provide them with hormone therapy treatment for gender dysphoria.

The women said in court papers that they were living in constant fear of sexual assault and other violence after being moved to male prisons. Male prisoners repeatedly propositioned them for sex and male officers subjected them to strip searches without female officers present, they said.

“The fact that they have already been transferred and, allegedly, have been abused at their new facilities can only strengthen their claims of irreparable harm,” Lamberth wrote. A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment.

The preliminary injunction is the latest in a series of rulings thwarting the agency’s efforts to comply with the executive order, which calls for housing transgender women in men’s prisons, and for halting gender-affirming medical care.

Lamberth, who was appointed by the Republican president Ronald Reagan, previously blocked the bureau from transferring a dozen other transgender women prisoners to men’s prisons.

In a ruling last month, he ordered that their “housing status and medical care” remain as they had been prior to inauguration day, when Trump signed the executive order. Separately, in January, a federal judge in Boston halted the transfer of another transgender woman to a men’s prison.

At the time, Rachel and Ellen Doe were not plaintiffs in any lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order and were not covered by Lamberth’s initial rulings.

In a court filing last month, a Trump administration official said that as of 20 February, there were 22 trans women housed in federal women’s facilities. That’s about 1% of the nearly 2,200 transgender prisoners the agency said it had in its custody.

With Lamberth’s order on Wednesday, at least 15 people are now covered by orders blocking or reversing the moves.

Lamberth has yet to rule in a lawsuit filed last week by three other prisoners – a trans woman housed in a men’s prison and two trans men housed in women’s prisons. They are challenging the executive order’s ban on gender-affirming hormone therapy and other care.

Meanwhile, Maine’s education office is being ordered to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports or face federal prosecution, an escalation in Trump’s threats to pull federal money from states and schools over transgender athletes.

The US education department on Wednesday said an investigation had concluded that Maine’s education office violated the Title IX anti-discrimination law by allowing trans girls to compete on girls’ sports teams and use girls’ facilities. It’s giving Maine 10 days to comply with a list of demands or face justice department prosecution.

The federal investigation into Maine’s department of education was opened on 21 February, just hours after Trump and the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, clashed over the issue at a meeting of governors at the White House. During the heated exchange, Mills told Trump: “We’ll see you in court.”