The federal Bureau of Prisons shall continue to offer transgender inmates hormone therapy and social accommodations as they fight President Trump’s executive order that aimed to limit access to the treatments, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., decided Tuesday.
Three transgender prisoners with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria who received hormone therapy and specific lifestyle accommodations, including clothes and hair removal equipment, while incarcerated were granted a preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth.
Following Mr. Trump’s executive order on his first day back in the White House, which prohibited federal monies from being used for any medical operation or therapy intended to verify an inmate’s look to that of the other sex, the convicts filed their case.
They argued that the directive and the Bureau of Prisons’ actions implementing it violated the Administrative Procedure Act, a federal law that regulates the agency rulemaking process, and asked the Washington district court to halt the implementation of Mr. Trump’s executive order while their lawsuit is pending.
Lamberth concurred, concluding that the plaintiffs’ claims under the Administrative Procedure Act have a good chance of success.
The judge ordered administration officials to continue providing transgender inmates with gender-affirming care and certain accommodations, as was the bureau’s policy prior to Mr. Trump’s inauguration, and prohibited them from implementing the president’s executive order regarding hormone therapy and social accommodations for those in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons.
President Ronald Reagan appointed Lamberth to write the 36-page opinion.
“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 wrote.
In reaction to Mr. Trump’s executive moves, transgender detainees have filed many cases, including the one before Lamberth.
The Bureau of Prisons issued memoranda prohibiting the use of federal funds to “purchase any items that align with transgender ideology” or to provide gender-affirming care for transgender detainees following the president’s order on the subject.
Additionally, the agency made it clear that requests for allowances related to apparel will not be granted.
The three plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in March while still in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons at the time the orders were issued. They were authorized to obtain social accommodations, such as underwear and personal hygiene items, and had been prescribed hormone therapy.
Although their access to the medical care has subsequently been restored, they were told that their treatments would be halted following Mr. Trump’s executive order.
In mid-March, the transgender inmates requested relief from the court and a certification of a class of all inmates in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons who will be or have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and receive the gender-affirming care that Mr. Trump’s executive order is intended to provide.
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Lamberth dismissed the Trump administration’s argument that continuing to provide some gender-affirming care to prisoners would put a financial strain on it. He mentioned that 600 inmates with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria are receiving hormone therapy from the Bureau of Prisons.
“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 stated.
Additionally, the judge stated that neither Mr. Trump’s executive order nor the Bureau of Prisons offered a “serious explanation” for why medical therapy for gender dysphoria ought to be treated differently from other mental health interventions.
The ruling is probably going to be appealed by the Justice Department. It is the most recent in a string of decisions made by trial court judges that have prevented numerous elements of Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda from being implemented.
