A federal judge on Tuesday sided with a class of transgender plaintiffs against one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders. Granting a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told the Federal Bureau of Prisons to keep providing gender-affirming care to inmates, notwithstanding Trump’s order that had sought to bar federal funds “for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
After Trump issued his order in January, the plaintiffs’ access to hormone medications and social accommodations (like clothing and hair removal devices) was cut off or reduced. Hormone medication access came back, but they still couldn’t get social accommodations. On behalf of a class of plaintiffs diagnosed with gender dysphoria, they sought to halt the order.
Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, agreed with them at this early stage in the case. He said the BOP must make social accommodations available to all class members to the same extent they were available prior to Trump’s order, as well as provide hormone therapy to all class members who were prescribed hormone medications by BOP or other medical personnel to the same extent as prior to Trump’s order.
The preliminary injunction is not a final decision on the subject but rather a move by the judge to maintain the status quo while the case proceeds.
But in siding with the plaintiffs at this preliminary stage, Lamberth said they’re likely to succeed on the merits. He said he agreed that the government’s enforcement of the order is “arbitrary and capricious” by failing to justify the executive action while treating gender dysphoria differently from other medical conditions. Quoting from Trump’s executive order, the judge said it failed to “make any effort whatsoever to explain how providing hormone medications or social accommodations to prisoners hampers ‘scientific inquiry, public safety, morale, trust in government,’ or any other virtue animating the Executive Order.” Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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