WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday would not let the Trump administration enforce its policy restricting gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons while a legal challenge to the policy goes forward.
The court denied the Justice Department’s emergency request to lift a federal judge’s order that blocks the Federal Bureau of Prisons from carrying out the policy, according to Reuters.
The order was brief and gave no explanation. That is common when the court acts on an emergency request. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in public.
Three transgender inmates held in federal prisons in New Jersey, Florida and Minnesota brought the case as a class action. The American Civil Liberties Union represents them.
Li Nowlin-Sohl, a lawyer with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, called the decision critical for incarcerated transgender people.
“The denial of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, to people in prison is a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights,”
The Bureau of Prisons put the policy out in February. It bars surgical and hormonal treatments for transgender inmates. It also bars what the bureau calls social accommodations, such as makeup, wigs, clothing and hair-removal devices that could change a person’s appearance to match their gender identity. Psychiatric services would still be allowed, Reuters reported.
The policy would reverse the way the prison system has handled gender dysphoria for decades. The plaintiffs say the federal system has treated people with the diagnosis with hormones since at least 1992. Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the distress that can follow when a person’s gender identity does not match the sex assigned at birth.
The Justice Department has defended the change. The department said the rules reflect the latest scientific information on treatment for gender dysphoria. It said the limits are also needed for security in prisons, where it says such treatments can make inmates targets, stir resentment among other inmates and reward threats of self-harm.
President Donald Trump issued the executive order behind the policy on his first day back in office. The order directs the federal government to recognize only two sexes, male and female, and says those sexes are not changeable.
For now, the judge’s block stays in place. The lawsuit itself has not been decided, and the administration can keep defending the policy in the lower courts.
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