FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 7, 2025
CONTACT:
K Richardson, Communications Manager, [email protected]
WASHINGTON – Three transgender people currently incarcerated in federal custody have filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump Administration and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) challenging an Executive Order and new BOP policies prohibiting their access to gender-affirming care. The class action lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of approximately 2,000 transgender people incarcerated in federal prisons across the United States.
Following a January 20 executive order from President Trump that prohibited gender-affirming medical care for transgender people in federal prisons and immigration detention centers, the BOP instructed federal prisons to cease treatments like hormone replacement therapy previously prescribed by BOP medical providers. BOP also instructed officials to remove any transgender women held in women’s facilities and place them in men’s facilities, an issue under challenge in multiple separate lawsuits. BOP’s new policy also prohibits gender-affirming clothing and commissary items for transgender people, and requires that incorrect pronouns be used.
Today’s lawsuit was filed on behalf of two transgender men and one transgender woman serving sentences in facilities in New Jersey, Minnesota, and Florida. All three were diagnosed with gender dysphoria by BOP medical providers and prescribed hormone therapy by health care staff, but have either had their treatments suspended or were told they will be suspended soon. The filing argues this policy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments,” which federal courts have long held includes the denial of medically necessary health care, including access to gender-affirming care.
It also argues that the policy violates the equal protection requirement of the 5th Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Rehabilitation Act. The case was filed on behalf of the three plaintiffs and all other transgender people in federal prisons by the ACLU, the ACLU of DC, and the Transgender Law Center.
“Since his first day in office, President Trump has singled out transgender people for discrimination, persecution, and erasure from public life,” said Li Nowlin-Sohl, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project. “This policy injects politics into the provision of health care for people in custody, putting the ideology of the president over the best medical judgement of BOP’s own officials as well as the rights and lives of incarcerated transgender people themselves. Withholding medically-necessary care from anyone in custody is cruel and unusual, and we’re confident the courts will not abide this clear and transparent violation of that principle.”
“Courts have held time and again that the Constitution requires that prisons provide incarcerated people with medical and mental health care. President Trump’s executive order categorically banning all gender-affirming care for transgender people in federal prisons is just as unconstitutional as categorically banning chemotherapy for incarcerated cancer patients or insulin for people with diabetes,” said Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU National Prison Project.
“People of all backgrounds, races, and genders know that we all deserve the right to live as our most authentic selves,” said Shawn Meerkamper, Managing Attorney at Transgender Law Center. “This executive order endangers lives and is an attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people everywhere. Denying access to the life-saving health care prescribed by BOP doctors is yet another cruel attempt at further harming and discriminating against transgender people.”
“The Trump administration’s decision to deny gender-affirming care approved by its own doctors is unconstitutional and part of a broader campaign to push trans people out of public life,” said Michael Perloff, Senior Staff Attorney at ACLU-D.C. “Trans people aren’t pawns in an ideological battle—they’re people who deserve access to critical medical care like everyone else.
The Trump administration has reportedly begun instructing BOP officials to ignore previous enforcement of the 2002 Prison Rape Elimination Act and unilaterally re-house transgender women into men’s prisons with the full knowledge of their risk for sexual violence and suicide, as well as confiscate clothing, commissary, items, or other personal items “inconsistent” their sex assigned at birth. A federal judge has since blocked that policy as-applied to the incarcerated transgender women who have brought separate challenges. Of the 155,000 people in federal prisons, just over 2,000 (or 1.2%) are transgender.
In December 2024, the Supreme Court held oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, a landmark case challenging Tennessee’s categorical ban on gender-affirming hormonal therapies for transgender youth on the grounds the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by discriminating based on sex. The case began when an initial lawsuit was first filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Tennessee, Lambda Legal, and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP on behalf of three transgender adolescents and their families. A decision is expected in June 2025.
To read the complaint filed today, download Kingdom v. Trump (PDF)
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