WASHINGTON — A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from transferring 14 transgender women in federal custody to men’s prisons, ruling that such transfers “would cause them immediate, irreparable harm,” according to a June 7, 2026, order in Doe v. Blanche.
“This decision reaffirms a bedrock constitutional principle: the government cannot knowingly place people in grave danger and simply look the other way,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, according to a June 8, 2026, press release by GLAD Law.
The decision stems from President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025, Executive Order 14168. The order, officially titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” alleges that there are only two sexes: male and female.
It also defines gender identity as “a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.”
In turn, Trump mandates that only cisgender women have access to “single-sex spaces,” such as shelters, workplaces and prisons.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth said the policy violates the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights. After reviewing “individualized evidence” from each of the 14 women who filed the complaint, Lamberth stated that, because of their appearances as “visibly feminized transgender women,” they would be subject to violence if placed in men’s prisons, according to The Advocate, an LGBTQ+ news outlet.
“Officials are not free to ignore documented risks of rape and violence because of who someone is,” Minter continued. “These women have the right to serve their sentences without being subjected to assault, and the court has rightly held that the law requires the government to assess and respond to the real dangers they face — not look the other way.”
The government argued that any harm committed against the transferees could be addressed after it occurred, according to The Advocate. Lamberth found that argument “fundamentally unreasonable” and disputed the notion that such violence is preventable after the fact.
“It is fundamentally unreasonable for prison officials to respond to serious risks such as mental health deterioration, self-harm, and suicide by intentionally creating those risks and offering to treat them after they predictably occur,” Lamberth wrote.
This ruling applies only to the 14 plaintiffs in the case.
Lamberth also noted an ongoing case in the Northern District of Texas, Fleming v. Warden T. Rule. The case involves a cisgender woman incarcerated at Federal Medical Center Carswell who is arguing against the United States, the attorney general and the Bureau of Prisons that all “biological males” should be removed from the prison under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the First, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, according to the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse.
A preliminary injunction granted June 2 resulted in transgender women incarcerated at the facility being placed “in a secure, segregated area” that would use “separate movement, routing, scheduling or other measures as necessary to prevent overlap” between cisgender and transgender incarcerated women, according to Lamberth’s order.
He said his ruling and Fleming v. Rule involve separate issues, explaining that he is addressing whether transgender women should be transferred to men’s prisons, not whether transgender and cisgender women should be housed together.
“Today’s injunction merely enjoins Defendants from transferring Plaintiffs to men’s prisons. It does not, at this juncture, require that Plaintiffs be housed alongside cisgender female inmates or share common spaces,” Lamberth wrote in his order.
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
