Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow Limits on Transgender Inmate Care

The Trump administration on September 28, 2026, filed an emergency Supreme Court application—its reported 41st since taking office—to enforce a February 2026 Bureau of Prisons policy barring hormone therapy, gender-transition surgeries and social accommodations for federal inmates with gender dysphoria. Inmates on hormones would be tapered off; psychotherapy and psychiatry would continue. Judge Royce Lamberth enjoined the policy in June and kept the block in August. A D.C. Circuit panel declined 2-1 to lift it, a Trump appointee dissenting. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued the injunction causes irreparable harm to the government and public, that courts should defer to prison officials on institutional security, and that the policy provides appropriate individualized treatment while disallowing only medically unnecessary interventions. Lamberth said he did not intend to wade into "the culture war being waged against transgender individuals" and called the action "arbitrary and capricious" for failing to consider BOP’s prior care experience. The government said the 2026 policy reflected independent judgment; the district court found it reverse engineered to implement Trump’s January 2025 executive order limiting related federal funds. The class-action plaintiffs can respond at the high court, which had not immediately acted.