A federal judge has blocked President Trump from transferring male prisoners out of women's prisons - in a setback for Trump's efforts to protect women's spaces from men who identify as "transgender."
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, an 81-year-old appointee of Ronald Reagan, issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump's move.
An executive order signed by Trump on January 20 instructs the attorney general to "ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers" and to stop any federal funding by the Bureau of Prisons on transgender medical interventions.
"Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being. The erasure of sex in language and policy has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system," Trump's order states.
The order was challenged by three male inmates, who claim that being housed with other men would exacerbate their psychological distress and expose them to harassment and sexual violence from male prisoners.
In his 11-page order, Lamberth found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their Eighth Amendment claims against cruel and unusual punishment.
The judge pointed to "government reports" that transgenders are prone to sexual violence "when housed in a facility corresponding to their biological sex — which the defendants do not dispute."
Lamberth also said male inmates with gender dysphoria could experience "uncomfortable dissonance" from having to share intimate spaces, such as showers, with other men.
"The plaintiffs further claim that placement in a male penitentiary by itself will exacerbate the symptoms of their gender dysphoria, even if they are not subject to physical or sexual violence in their new facility—whether because they will be subject to searches by male correctional officers, made to shower in the company of men, referred to as men, forced to dress as men, or simply because the mere homogenous presence of men will cause uncomfortable
dissonance," the judge wrote.
Lamberth did not appear to acknowledge the discomfort experienced by female inmates housed with men. The judge conceded that housing male inmates in a women's prison could have "some deleterious effect on privacy and security," but he said those risks are "abstract" compared to the "substantial harms" of housing male prisoners with gender dysphoria in men's prisons.
"The defendants have not so much as alleged that the plaintiffs in this particular suit present any threat to the female staff housed with them," he added.
