Paulina Poe is a transgender woman serving a federal sentence in a men’s prison. Her name in this case is not her real one, because the people most likely to hurt her are the ones who sleep down the hall.

For more than a decade, federal law gave her a measure of protection. When someone like Paulina enters a facility, staff are required to screen her for the risk of being sexually abused and to take that risk into account in deciding where she is housed, including considering where she believes she will be safe. She must be allowed to shower separately from other prisoners. Guards cannot strip-search her simply to find out what her body looks like. And every six months, someone must ask again whether she is safe. These rules are not courtesies. They exist because Congress found that transgender people in custody are sexually assaulted at rates many times higher than other prisoners, and because, without them, the abuse occurs over and over again.

In December 2025, the Trump administration’s Trump administration’s Department of Justice announced by memo that it would no longer enforce any of them.

The protections come from the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which Congress passed unanimously in 2003, and President George W. Bush signed into law. After years of hearings and public comment, DOJ issued binding regulations in 2012 that tell every prison, jail, and detention center in the country what it must do to prevent sexual abuse, with specific provisions for the people at greatest risk, including transgender people. Facilities are audited for compliance. The regulations have the force of law.

On January 20, 2025, the President issued an executive order declaring that the federal government would not recognize transgender people and directing DOJ to rewrite the Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations accordingly. Changing a regulation requires public notice, public comment, and a reasoned explanation. DOJ never did any of that. Instead, on December 2, 2025, it sent a memorandum to Prison Rape Elimination Act auditors stating that, effective immediately, facilities would no longer be held to any regulation that refers to transgender people, and that auditors should stop checking. With a few pages and no process, the Department told every correctional facility in the country that the rules protecting Paulina no longer apply.

On May 6, 2026, the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, GLAD Law, Lowenstein Sandler LLP, and Wardenski P.C. filed suit on Paulina’s behalf in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Our argument rests on a principle that does not depend on anyone’s views about transgender people: the government has to follow its own law.

A regulation adopted through formal rulemaking cannot be erased by an internal memo. We have asked the court to set the memorandum aside, declare that the Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations remain fully in force, and require DOJ to tell every facility it oversees that they must be followed.

What is at stake 

Paulina is one of thousands of transgender people in federal, state, and local custody who were protected by these rules, and who now are not. For them, the question in this case is not abstract. It is whether anyone is required to ask if they are safe, and whether anyone has to answer.

Where the case stands

• December 2, 2025: DOJ memorandum suspends enforcement of all Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations referring to transgender people. 

• May 6, 2026: Case filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Now: We have asked the court to rule on the merits through a motion for summary judgment, on the ground that the memorandum violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Prison Rape Elimination Act itself. A decision is pending.