Washington- The Supreme Court on Wednesday left intact a lower court ruling that blocked the Trump administration from implementing a new Bureau of Prisons policy that would end certain medical interventions for transgender inmates.
In an unsigned one-line order, the high court rejected an emergency appeal from the Justice Department asking it to freeze the district court’s order and reinstate the new rules. The policy would remove surgical and hormonal treatments, as well as social accommodations, for inmates who have been or will be diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they would have allowed the Trump administration to implement the change.
The Trump administration requested the intervention of the Supreme Court in the dispute last month and argued that the new policy regarding transgender inmates is necessary to “maintain institutional security.”
But lawyers for a transgender woman and two transgender men in federal prisons who challenged the rules said the Bureau of Prisons has provided hormone treatment to people with gender dysphoria since 1992. They said the new policy required an end to treatment for nearly 1,000 inmates in the bureau’s custody.
Li Nowlin-Sohl, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represented the inmates, said the Supreme Court’s decision is crucial for transgender people incarcerated in the federal system.
“Denying medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, to incarcerated people is a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights,” Nowlin-Sohl said in a statement. “We will continue to defend the rights of our clients and all incarcerated people.”
The case follows Trump’s executive order
The Supreme Court dispute stems from a lawsuit filed last year by inmates against the Trump administration on behalf of incarcerated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The suit was filed after President Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the use of federal funds for medical procedures or treatment for transgender inmates held by the Bureau of Prisons.
In response to Mr. Trump’s directive, the Bureau of Prisons issued a new policy in February stating that it would not provide surgeries or hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria. Inmates who were receiving hormonal treatments could be subject to a tapering plan that would eventually lead to the cessation of the interventions.
Under the new rules, the Bureau of Prisons will no longer provide any social accommodations, such as breast pads, school bags, wigs and makeup, to inmates suffering from gender dysphoria.
In a memo accompanying the policy, the Bureau of Prisons cited Mr. Trump’s executive order and said it had changed its rules to “reflect treatment of gender dysphoria that is more consistent with the latest scientific information, that is consistent with the BOP’s long-standing policy of providing medical care tailored to the unique needs of the inmate, and that takes into account the complex security and administrative concerns in the correctional environment.”
In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued an order blocking the Trump administration from implementing the February policy. The judge directed the Bureau of Prisons to continue providing medical interventions and social accommodations to a class of inmates suffering from gender dysphoria.
“The court does not interfere in the culture war waged against transgender people,” Lamberth, appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote in a 31-page decision. “The court simply finds that the government violated (federal law) when it issued a new policy restricting the provision of gender-affirming care to inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”
Lamberth issued an order in August that continues to block this policy.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later refused to lift the district court’s injunction. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court said the Bureau of Prisons “failed to adequately consider its own experience with gender-affirming care under its prior policy” and failed to clearly demonstrate that it had a chance of success on the merits of the case.
Appeal to the Supreme Court
In his emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the district court’s decision “prevents the enforcement of the executive’s chosen policy” on a broad basis.
Sauer defended the legality of the policy ending medical treatment for transgender inmates and said the Bureau of Prisons “considered its prior experience both in determining that such interventions are not medically necessary and in determining that security and prison administration concerns independently justified a policy change.”
But opponents of the administration’s new rules have argued that the Trump administration has not presented a shred of evidence indicating whether Bureau of Prisons health care providers view the now-restricted medical treatments as effective, ineffective or harmful.
“The BOP has discontinued the treatment its health care providers had been recommending for decades and replaced it with psychotherapy – which its own expert acknowledges is not supported by any evidence demonstrating its effectiveness as a treatment for gender dysphoria – and psychotropic medications – which the BOP medical director does not even claim to treat gender dysphoria, but only co-existing conditions,” attorneys for the transgender inmates wrote.
They also argued that the agency has not “reported a single security incident” related to the provision of medical interventions to combat gender dysphoria.
“If BOP physicians had deemed this treatment unnecessary or harmful to patients or if the agency had found that the treatment compromised safety, the BOP surely would have mentioned this in the administrative record,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys said. “This glaring omission, along with the unreasonableness of his decision, makes it clear that the justifications were designed to support the request made by President Trump in the EO.”
Gn headline
