Supreme Court Blocks Trump Administration Effort to Restrict Gender-Transition Treatments for Federal Inmates

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected an effort by the Trump administration to restrict access to gender-transition procedures for inmates in federal prison.

The Court issued a brief order rejecting the administration’s emergency application seeking to block a lower court injunction against the policy, which would impact some 1,000 transgender-identifying inmates.

The brief order said only that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have granted the application.

Under the proposed Bureau of Prisons policy, inmates would no longer have access to surgical and hormone therapy treatments or “social accommodations,” such as wigs, breast padding, binders, or makeup.

The policy would have granted the affected inmates access only to mental health services and medications like antidepressants.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued the new policy is needed to “maintain institutional security.”

Attorneys for three inmates who would have been impacted by the policy argued the Bureau of Prisons has provided hormone treatment to people with “gender dysphoria” since 1992. Those inmates sued the administration with backing from the American Civil Liberties Union after President Trump issued an executive order last year prohibiting the use of federal funds for medical procedures or treatments for transgender-identifying inmates in federal prisons.

The Bureau of Prisons issued the new policy in February in response to Trump’s executive order. Had the policy gone into effect, inmates who were receiving hormone treatments would have been put on a tapering plan to ultimately phase out the treatments.

At the time the policy was issued, the Bureau of Prisons issued a memo saying the rule change was intended to “reflect treatment for gender dysphoria that is more aligned with the latest scientific information, that is consistent with BOP’s longstanding policy of providing medical care that is tailored to the unique needs of the inmate, and that accounts for the complex security and administration concerns in the correctional environment.”

ACLU attorneys alleged the administration violated the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, by enacting the policy. They also argued the abrupt change, which they say was made without necessary explanation, “gives rise to the inference that the agency’s purported reasons were not its actual reasons.”

“That glaring omission, as well as the unreasonableness of its decision, make it clear that the rationales were contrived to support the demand President Trump made in the EO.”

In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued an order blocking the administration from enforcing the policy.

“The court does not wade into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals,” Lamberth wrote in a 31-page decision. “The court simply concludes that the government violated [federal law] when it issued a new policy restricting the provision of gender-affirming care to inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later upheld Lamberth’s ruling in a 2-1 decision finding, in part, that the Bureau of Prisons “did not adequately consider its own experience providing gender-affirming care under its prior policy.”