Lawsuit accuses Trump DOJ of stripping anti-rape protections from trans prisoners

The Trump administration is facing a new federal lawsuit accusing the Justice Department of illegally dismantling protections meant to shield transgender incarcerated people from sexual abuse.

Filed on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit challenges a December 2025 Justice Department memorandum directing prisons and federal auditors to disregard portions of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, regulations that specifically protect transgender people behind bars.

The suit, Poe v. U.S. Department of Justice, was brought by the National Center for LGBTQ Rights on behalf of Paulina Poe, a transgender woman incarcerated in a men’s prison.

The plaintiffs accuse the Trump administration of attempting to erase federal recognition of transgender incarcerated people by informally suspending longstanding prison safety regulations without legally repealing them. According to the complaint, the Justice Department instructed prisons to ignore federal protections requiring individualized safety assessments for transgender people and ordered PREA auditors to stop evaluating whether prisons comply with those standards.

Related: Federal judge says Oregon must house trans inmates by gender identity, not Trump’s policy

At the center of the case is PREA, the bipartisan anti-prison-rape law Congress passed unanimously in 2003 after years of reports documenting widespread sexual violence in American correctional facilities. The law directed the Justice Department to create national standards aimed at preventing rape and abuse behind bars.

The regulations implementing PREA took years to develop and were shaped by federal research showing transgender incarcerated people face disproportionately high rates of sexual assault. PREA protections finalized in 2012 specifically recognized transgender people as especially vulnerable populations inside prisons and jails.

“One thing we really haven’t conveyed, but that is important, is how longstanding and well-established these protections are for incarcerated transgender people,” NCLR legal director Shannon Minter told The Advocate.

Minter pointed to the landmark 1994 U.S. Supreme Court case Farmer v. Brennan, brought by a transgender woman incarcerated in a men’s prison, in which the high court held prison officials can be held liable when they knowingly expose incarcerated people to serious danger.

“It’s no accident that it was a transgender plaintiff who brought that suit because transgender people are, as we know, 10 times more likely to experience sexual violence in prison,” Minter said.

Related: Appeals court clears path to move trans women into men’s prisons despite sexual assault risk

The rules require prisons to make individualized housing decisions instead of automatically assigning transgender people based solely on anatomy or sex assigned at birth. They also require officials to consider transgender people’s own views regarding their safety, provide opportunities for separate shower access, and prohibit invasive searches conducted solely to determine genital anatomy.

The PREA Resource Center, the federally funded clearinghouse that trains prison systems and auditors on compliance, describes transgender status as a known risk factor for sexual victimization in custody and says housing decisions must be made “on a case-by-case basis.”

The lawsuit argues the Trump administration never formally repealed those regulations. Instead, according to the complaint, the Justice Department issued a memo instructing PREA auditors not to evaluate compliance with transgender-related protections and telling prisons to “disregard” them altogether.

“Trump ordered DOJ to go through the official process of amending those regulations to wipe out any mention of transgender people and to wipe out any protection for transgender people,” Minter said. “But DOJ did not do that.”

Instead, he said, the department “just sent a memo to all federal prisons saying, ‘Just act as though these don’t exist.’”

The lawsuit hinges on the Administrative Procedure Act, the federal law governing how agencies create, revise, or rescind regulations. In practical terms, the plaintiffs argue that the executive branch cannot simply ignore federal rules already on the books because a president disagrees with them politically.

Related: WATCH: Incarcerated Trans Woman Sues Georgia Prisons Over Repeated Rapes, Hormone Denial

The lawsuit comes amid a broader campaign by President Donald Trump’s administration to erase federal recognition of transgender people across public life. The complaint cites executive actions affecting passports, military service, schools, prisons, health care, and federal data collection targeting trans people.

The filing repeatedly references Executive Order 14168, signed on Trump’s first day back in office, which directed federal agencies to recognize only sex assigned at birth and specifically targeted transgender incarcerated people.

That order instructed the Bureau of Prisons to transfer transgender women into men’s facilities regardless of individualized safety concerns and sought to terminate gender-affirming medical care for incarcerated trans people.

Federal courts have already partially blocked aspects of those prison policies in separate lawsuits. Judges in Washington, D.C., halted efforts to transfer some transgender women from women’s prisons into men’s facilities and temporarily blocked restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for certain incarcerated trans people.

But Minter said this new lawsuit is broader because it challenges the administration’s attempt to suspend PREA protections for all transgender incarcerated people, not only those already involved in transfer litigation.

“Most transgender women are not in women’s facilities, and the PREA protections are so important for them because they are just so vulnerable,” Minter said. “Even with those protections in place, they are far more likely to experience violence and assault. But without those protections, it’s just unthinkable, the level of risk.”

The lawsuit asks the court to invalidate the DOJ memorandum and restore nationwide enforcement of the PREA regulations.

Recent Supreme Court decisions over nationwide injunctions have complicated efforts to broadly block federal policies in constitutional cases. Administrative-law claims, however, can still invalidate agency actions nationwide if courts determine the government acted unlawfully, Minter explained.

“We’re asking the court to hold that memorandum is unlawful,” he said. “You can’t just bypass the required process for a federal regulation that’s on the books.”