WASHINGTON, DC – In a move of wide-ranging executive orders, President Trump has ordered federal prisons to house inmates who are transgender women in men’s facilities and stop all medical treatments relating to gender transition, reported the New York Times.
President Trump stated that “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety and well-being,” added the New York Times.
“There will be rapes and physical assaults because of this policy,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which has represented transgender prisoners. “It’s also terrible for prison officials, who right now have the authority to use discretion about what makes the most sense for the safety and security of the facility,” the Times wrote.
“Constitutional protections do not stop if a person is in prison or in jail, or in immigration detention facilities,” said Richard Saenz, a lawyer at Lambda Legal (an LGBTQ legal advocacy organization), reported the New York Times.
Trump’s executive order, entitled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” appears to only require the rehousing of transgender women, not transgender men, the Times noted, adding “federal data shows that transgender prisoners are 10 times as likely to report being sexually victimized as other prisoners.”
Under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, transgender status is one of the risk factors taken into account when housing assignments are determined, reported the New York Times, adding Trump’s new executive order calls for those regulations to be amended “as necessary.”
“We’re encouraged to see these protections for privacy in women’s prisons and in rape shelters, ensuring that no woman ever has to face abuse, harassment or the loss of privacy and dignity from a man sharing these intimate spaces,” said Matt Sharp, senior counsel and director for public policy at Alliance Defending Freedom (a conservative legal advocacy group), wrote the New York Times.
The order requires all gender-transition medical care to cease, ensuring that no federal funds be spent “for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex,” according to the New York Times.
Jasmine Tasaki, a transgender woman who has been in prison and is now executive director of Black and Pink, a national organization that advocates on behalf of incarcerated LGBTQ people, said taking these medical procedures away from inmates would cause depression, said the New York Times.
Tasaki said “she had been held in isolation and was not permitted to bathe,” the New York Times reported, adding that under a new policy enacted in Florida in the fall of 2024, “prison officials forced transgender women to cut their hair, surrender their bras and overcome much tougher requirements to obtain gender transition-related treatment, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.”
