Update February 19, 2025: A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in our case representing three incarcerated transgender women at risk of being transferred to a men’s facility and having their necessary medical care stopped. This blocks the Bureau of Prisons from enforcing against our clients President Trump’s first Executive Order attempting to deny the existence of transgender people, while our case against it continues. We are moving to protect as many of the transgender women in the women’s BOP units as we can and are adding anyone we hear from in the same circumstances.
NCLR, GLAD Law, Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP and Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP represent three transgender women in a case challenging a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) policy directed by President Trump which would override Prison Rape Elimination Act protections for vulnerable populations, including transgender women, and would terminate all medical care for gender dysphoria for incarcerated individuals. As a result of the policy, which stems from a January 20, 2025, Executive Order issued by President Trump, the plaintiffs were at imminent risk of being moved to a men’s facility and having their necessary medical care withdrawn.
The complaint, filed January 30, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that the policies required by the new executive order violate the Administrative Procedure Act because they are arbitrary and capricious and also directly conflict with a Prison Rape Elimination Act regulation requiring prison officials to make housing determinations based on an individualized assessment of safety and security. The complaint also alleges that the policies required by the new Executive Order are unconstitutional because they discriminate based on a person’s transgender status, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause, and violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
A hearing was scheduled in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on February 4, 2025, at 10am.
This case was previously called Doe v. McHenry.
