The Bureau of Prisons had already decided where these women belonged. Each of these plaintiffs is a transgender woman in federal custody. Each had been evaluated by the Bureau’s own staff under the individualized safety process that federal law requires, and each had been placed in a women’s facility because the Bureau concluded that was where she could be kept safe. For several, that decision came after they had already been raped, assaulted, or harassed. The women’s facility was not a preference. It was what the government itself determined was necessary to protect them.

On January 20, 2025, the President issued an executive order that had two consequences for transgender women in prison. Every transgender woman in federal custody was to be moved to a men’s facility, regardless of what the Bureau had previously determined about her safety. And all medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone therapy some of these women have received for years, would now end.

The women in this case learned they were being transferred. Some were moved before anyone could stop it.

Ten days after the order, on January 30, 2025, the National Center for LGBTQ Rights and GLAD Law, with Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP and Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, filed suit in federal court in Washington, D.C. Three women brought the first case. As more were told to pack, more joined, and two related cases were consolidated into this one; our clients now number more than a dozen. Their declarations describe what a men’s prison means for a woman like them: being housed with men who have assaulted them, being extorted for protection, being harassed by guards and prisoners alike, and living every day with the knowledge that there is no one to call.

Our claims are straightforward. The Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment does not allow the government to knowingly place someone where she faces a substantial risk of sexual assault, or to cut off treatment her doctors say she needs. The Bureau’s own rules under the Prison Rape Elimination Act require it to decide housing based on an individual assessment of safety, not a blanket order. And a policy that singles out transgender people for harsher treatment, for no reason but who they are, violates the guarantee of equal protection.

What is at stake

For these women the question is literal: where will they sleep tonight, and will the medication they take every morning still be there. Every one of them has spent time in a men’s facility. Every one of them knows what the transfer means. The injunction in this case is the only thing standing between them and a return to it.

Where the case stands

• February 2025: Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, granted a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction, finding the transfers likely violated the Eighth Amendment. He extended that protection to each group of women who joined the case, including those who had already been moved and had to be transferred back.

• 2026: The D.C. Circuit vacated the injunction. It did not find the transfers lawful; it held that the district court had ruled on the risk to transgender women generally, when the record needed findings about each plaintiff’s individual vulnerability and the reasons the Bureau had placed her in a women’s facility to begin with. The case was sent back for that showing.

• June 8, 2026: On a renewed motion built around each woman’s individual circumstances, the district court again enjoined the Bureau from transferring our clients to men’s facilities or ending their medical care.

• Now: The government has appealed again to the D.C. Circuit, where briefing is under way, and has moved for summary judgment in the district court, which is also being briefed. Meanwhile, the Bureau has begun confining some of the women in a restricted unit within a women’s facility, with little access to work, recreation, or programs; we successfully sought to amend our complaint to address this issue and asked the court to preliminarily enjoin DOJ from segregating these women and return them to the general population. 

This case was previously captioned Doe v. McHenry and Doe v. Bondi.