A Reagan-appointed federal judge temporarily stopped the Trump administration from moving three male inmates out of women’s prison facilities on Tuesday in part because they don’t “present any threat” to female inmates.
District Judge Royce Lamberth, who took the bench in 1987, ruled on Tuesday to temporarily block President Donald Trump’s executive order to keep men in men’s prisons even if they identify as women. The ruling was in favor of “three male-to-female transgender women” who sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the Washington, D.C., district court to stop their transfer, alleging that Trump’s directive violates federal law and their constitutional rights.
Women across the U.S. have reported trans-identifying male inmates attacking or raping them in women’s prison facilities. Male convicts also have a repeated pattern of committing violent crimes and later identifying as women in prison, alarming policy experts but drawing sympathetic media coverage.
“The [government has] not so much as alleged that the plaintiffs in this particular suit present any threat to the female inmates housed with them, or that this threat cannot be managed locally by prison staff,” Lamberth said in his court order. “Thus, the public interest in seeing the plaintiffs relocated immediately to male facilities is slight at best.”
Lamberth said the male plaintiffs showed “sufficient” evidence the Trump administration may be breaking the Eighth Amendment — which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment” — by moving to separate inmates by sex as the U.S. government has done for centuries. The judge downplayed the dangers male criminal convicts pose to women.
“Even if the Court credits the Executive Order’s representation that housing biological males in female penitentiaries has some deleterious effect on privacy and security, by the [government’s] own admission, there are only about sixteen male-to-female transgender women housed in female penitentiaries, including the plaintiffs,” Lamberth argued.
Data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) show that 1,538, or 15%, of inmates in women’s federal prisons nationwide are men.
Lamberth also said the plaintiffs cited evidence that “transgender persons are at a significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence relative to other inmates when housed in a facility corresponding to their biological sex.”
The three men suing Trump’s DOJ filed anonymously as “Jane Doe” and their criminal records are unknown.
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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