President Donald Trump gives remarks during an event celebrating the 2024 Stanley Cup Champion the Florida Panthers in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, February 3, 2025 (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images).
The upcoming transfer of transgender inmates to prisons that correspond with their biological sex is a relatively minor issue and no cause for alarm, the Trump administration said in a new court filing.
In a late Monday response submitted with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the U.S. Department of Justice offered a variety of reasons to try and stop three transgender women from obtaining a court-ordered pause on the controversial new policy.
The three Doe inmates sued the federal government on Jan. 30, in response to a Jan. 20, executive order signed by President Donald Trump which purports to defend women from “gender ideology extremism” and restore “biological truth” through the transfers and by barring inmates from accessing medical care for gender dysphoria.
In their redacted complaint, the plaintiffs offer highly specific details about their own personal narratives and experiences as both transgender individuals and as inmates.
Each of the plaintiffs have lived as women for several years, according to their lawsuit. One of the women has previously been “sexually assaulted” in men’s facilities run by the Bureau of Prisons and one has been “raped multiple times,” the lawsuit says. The third woman, who has had several surgeries as part of her transitioning process, fears that she “may be forced to shower in full view of men who are incarcerated, and her breasts and female genitalia will be exposed and vulnerable to sexual harassment, assault, and rape.”
In each instance, the lawsuit contains the specific refrain: “she will not be safe.”
“Involuntarily transferring Plaintiffs to men’s facilities under [Trump’s] Order would be a cruel and unnecessary revocation of this reasonable accommodation and would deny them equal benefits of correctional and rehabilitative programs and services, including but not limited to safe housing, showers, and healthcare consistent with accepted medical standards,” the lawsuit reads.
The government’s motion takes a bird’s-eye view approach to dispute the notion that the anti-transgender policy amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, which is barred by the Eighth Amendment.
“The prospect of placement in a men’s facility does not constitute ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment because, as Congress has authorized, BOP may designate any facility that meets ‘minimum standards of health and habitability,”” the response reads. “Indeed, the vast majority of the male-to-female transgender inmates (1,490 out of a total of 1,506, or 98.9%) are housed in men’s facilities.”
More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Humiliating, terrifying and dangerous’: Transgender woman files first lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order on ‘gender ideology extremism’
In other words, the government is essaying the idea that facts on the ground preclude the new policy from being constitutionally impermissible — because it is simply a way to apply an existing policy across the board. To hear the DOJ tell it, transferring all of 16 transgender women in federal custody to men’s prisons cannot be cruel and usual because so many similarly situated inmates are currently in men’s facilities.
From the latest motion, at length:
While BOP is aware of studies suggesting that transgender inmates may have an increased risk of victimization, that by no means suggests that all transgender male-to-female inmates must be housed in women’s prisons. Rather, it has always been the practical reality — under both the current and prior versions of the Transgender Offender Manual — that almost all transgender inmates are housed in a facility corresponding to their biological sex
The government also says they have a specific plan for those 16 inmates that will mitigate any potential sexual violence.
“BOP has found that low-security facilities will be the primary options because each houses a large number of non-violent offenders,” the response goes on. “BOP believes that placing Plaintiffs at low security institutions with non-violent offenders will minimize the likelihood that they would be victimized.”
The case out of the nation’s capital is the second instance in which transgender inmates have sued over Trump’s new prison directives.
In Massachusetts federal court last week, a transgender plaintiff identified as Maria Moe won a temporary restraining order barring BOP officials from moving her to a men’s prison.
A hearing in the Washington, D.C.-based case was slated to occur before Ronald Reagan-appointed U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth on Tuesday.
