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

The Bureau of Prisons could soon relocate transgender women inmates to men’s prisons.

A federal appellate court in Washington, D.C., ruled that 18 inmates failed to make a case that such transfers inherently amount to “cruel and unusual punishment,” reversing a lower court’s decision.

But the ruling still leaves room in the coming weeks for inmates to argue on an individual basis that they would be put at risk of physical harm.

The Justice Department has pushed to segregate prisoners based on gender assigned at birth, in accordance with an executive order issued by President Donald Trump shortly after the start of his second term. But as the administration began relocating inmates in the D.C. circuit, it immediately prompted a legal challenge last year.

The appellate court reversed a decision by a judge in D.C. last year. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction in February 2025, halting any transfer. Lamberth had also previously issued a temporary restraining order to protect three incarcerated transgender women from imminent transfer.

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“Summarily removing the possibility of housing the plaintiffs in a women’s facility, when that was determined to be the appropriate facility under the existing constitutional and statutory regime, demonstrates a likelihood of success on the merits of the plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment claim,” Lamberth wrote in his decision.

A majority on a three-judge panel, though, said the inmates had not made a sufficient constitutional argument to justify that decision. The panel lifted the broad block on relocating transgender women to men’s facilities.

“Turning to the merits, we conclude that we cannot sustain the preliminary injunctions because plaintiffs expressly disclaim the district court’s rationale for granting relief and instead advance a narrower ground for upholding the injunctions — namely, that they are entitled to relief based on their specific characteristics — that we cannot adopt on the existing record. We thus vacate the preliminary injunctions and remand for further proceedings,” reads the majority opinion, from Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Judge Cornelia Pillard.

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The ruling leaves open the possibility of future challenges but directs lower courts to consider claims individually. That means each inmate must successfully argue before a judge that they face immediate danger if moved to a men’s prison.

Transgender women, particularly those housed in men’s prisons, are widely documented as facing heightened risks of violence, extortion, and sexual abuse. The Marshall Project found that incarcerated trans people are often targeted for exploitation and assault, with one federal study showing 37 percent reported being sexually assaulted in custody, compared with about 3 percent of the general prison population. Advocates and researchers say those risks are closely tied to housing decisions that place transgender women in men’s facilities, where they can become, as the report notes, “a ready target” for abuse and coercion.

Both Srinivasan and Pillard were appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by Democratic President Barack Obama in 2013. Pillard authored the opinion.

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Judge Raymond Randolph, who was first appointed to the bench in 1990 by GOP President George H.W. Bush, penned a dissent. Although he agreed with the decision to vacate the injunction, he cited prison reforms enacted in 1995 that required prisoners to exhaust all administrative remedies before bringing the matter to court.

Attorneys for inmates said the ruling ultimately provided a path forward to continue to fight the administration’s policies.

“We’re going to do exactly what the court directed us to do,” Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights and an attorney on the case, told The New York Times. “Go back to the district court judge and ask him to put these individualized findings on the record in a ruling.”

The Justice Department, though, argued the decision lays the groundwork ultimately for successfully ending prior policies of housing transgender inmates based on gender identity.

“Today’s decision is a win for common sense and biology,” reads a media statement from Justice Department spokesperson Emily Covington.

Advocates say the broader policy context further heightens those risks. In a recent op-ed about policies stripping trans inmates of care while incarceratd for The Advocate, attorney Shannon Minter, who is representing transgender inmates in the case, described the Bureau of Prisons’ approach as “a blueprint for a government-run conversion therapy program,” arguing it punishes transgender people “for being who they are” by stripping medical care, confiscating personal belongings, and subjecting them to forced psychological treatment.

He and other advocates warn that policies restricting gender-affirming care and housing decisions based on sex assigned at birth can compound the already elevated risks transgender women face in custody.