Judge rules federal prisons must continue providing hormone therapy to transgender inmates

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Source: AP

Updated 1:30 PM EDT, June 3, 2025


WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal Bureau of Prisons must continue providing hormone therapy and social accommodations to hundreds of transgender inmates following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that led to a disruption in medical treatment, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said in his ruling a federal law prohibits prison officials from arbitrarily depriving inmates of medications and other lifestyle accommodations that its own medical staff has deemed appropriate. The judge said the transgender inmates who sued to block Trump’s executive order are trying to lessen the personal anguish caused by their gender dysphoria, the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match.

“In light of the plaintiffs’ largely personal motives for undergoing gender-affirming care, neither the BOP nor the Executive Order provides any serious explanation as to why the treatment modalities covered by the Executive Order or implementing memoranda should be handled differently than any other mental health intervention,” the judge wrote.

The Bureau of Prisons is providing hormone therapy to more than 600 inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The bureau doesn’t dispute that gender dysphoria can cause severe side effects, including depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts, the judge said.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/transgender-prison-inmates-hormone-therapy-d07dc644d3eb29d847de92cc09f1284d

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Link to RULING (PDF) - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278186/gov.uscourts.dcd.278186.67.0_1.pdf

Link to ACLU PRESS RELEASE - Federal Judge Temporarily Enjoins Federal Prison Officials from Withholding Health Care From Incarcerated Trans People

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1. This will PO the taco man.

[area51]

2. Trans rights are human rights. n/t

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3. The Bureau of Prisons said it has continued to provide hormone treatment to more than 600 federal inmates after Trump ex

The Bureau of Prisons said it has continued to provide hormone treatment to more than 600 federal inmates after Trump executive order.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/06/03/judge-bars-trump-transgender-prisoners/

A federal judge on Tuesday barred the Trump administration from withholding hormone treatment from more than 1,000 transgender inmates under an executive order signed by President Donald Trump, after the U.S. Bureau of Prisons acknowledged it had continued providing such treatment to roughly 628 of the inmates.

In a 36-page-opinion, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Washington, D.C., granted class-action status to a lawsuit brought on behalf of an estimated 1,028 BOP inmates who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, distress caused by a mismatch between their assigned gender and gender identity.

Lamberth entered a preliminary injunction in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that followed similar rulings in cases involving individual prisoners challenging Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, previously barred the government from moving transgender women to men’s prison facilities under the order while litigation continues. Tuesday’s ruling ordered the government to maintain the status quo before Trump’s order by continuing hormone therapy to all current and future class members prescribed such medications and restoring accommodations such as clothing and undergarments and commissary items.......

The court said it was ruling against any blanket ban against hormone treatment, and not deciding whether all individual class members should receive it. The judge wrote, “Whether a uniform policy prohibiting people with a given medical condition from receiving a certain treatment for that condition violates the Eighth Amendment or the Administrative Procedure Act” is “amenable to judicial consideration without the Court wading into a thousand personalized medical assessments.”

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4. This makes me smile

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