Supreme Court Leaves Injunction on Transgender Prison Policy in Place

On October 21, 2026, the Supreme Court issued a one-sentence order leaving in place Judge Royce Lamberth's injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing a Bureau of Prisons policy that would halt surgeries, taper hormones and end social accommodations for transgender inmates. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. The policy followed Trump's January 2025 executive order and a February BOP statement. About 600 inmates received hormone therapy in 2025; more than 2,000 transgender inmates were in federal custody per 2025 figures. Hormones have been provided since at least 1992. Three inmates in New Jersey, Florida and Minnesota sued. The D.C. Circuit left the June block in place 2-1 on September 18. The administration called the injunction an egregious intrusion into federal prison administration, said treatments could no longer be justified, and urged discontinuing unproven sex-rejecting interventions in favor of mental-health treatment, citing security. Solicitor General D. John Sauer pressed that case. The ACLU said the government showed no security problems over three decades and wrote that the rationales were contrived to support Trump's executive order. Lamberth found the policy likely arbitrary and capricious and wrote the court has no intention of wading into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals. ACLU attorney Li Nowlin-Sohl said denying gender-affirming care violates fundamental constitutional rights. The court gave no explanation; the case proceeds in lower courts.