Federal judge blocks Trump admin from transferring trans-identified males out of women's prisons

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from transferring trans-identified male inmates from women’s facilities to men’s facilities and from terminating their access to hormone therapy in response to an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on day one.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, DC wrote that there are around 16 trans-identified males being housed in female penitentiaries, including the three transgender males who brought the suit. Lamberth wrote that "the public interest in seeing the plaintiffs relocated immediately to male facilities is slight at best," according to NBC News. "Moreover, the balance of the equities and the public interest favor the plaintiffs."

Trump signed an executive order on January 20, titled "Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government," which stated in part that "The Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers" and that "The Attorney General shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order, and shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex." The ruling stated that the Trump administration is temporarily blocked from carrying out the executive order.

Lambert wrote that evidence presented by the inmates showed that moving them to men’s prisons would place them at a "significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence," and that not receiving their medication for gender dysphoria would cause "numerous and severe symptoms," Politico reported.

The Department of Justice argued that it was too soon for the judge to rule on the matter because the inmates had not yet been relocated, but if they had been, they would first need to go through the grievance processes within the Bureau of Prisons before going to the courts. Lamberth said the case was an exception because the executive order "plainly requires the BOP to perform the allegedly unlawful facility transfer and to withhold the prescribed hormone therapy drugs."