Federal Prisons Must Continue Trans Care Despite Trump Order

Trans inmates at federal prisons can continue receiving gender-affirming care following a judge’s refusal to stop blocking officials from implementing a policy that prohibits spending federal money for the treatments.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons can’t categorically withdraw hormone treatments and other care meant to conform prisoners’ outward appearances to their genders while it appeals a preliminary injunction barring a policy implementing President Donald Trump’s gender ideology executive order, the US District Court for the District of Columbia said Tuesday. BOP hadn’t shown that its inability to implement the policy immediately would cause it irreparable harm, Judge Royce C. Lamberth said.

The prisoners would be irreparably injured by the immediate loss of their gender-affirming health care and social accommodations if the injunction were stayed, Lamberth said. It’s not “in the interest of justice or judicial economy for BOP to implement the 2026 policy” while the case is on appeal, he said.

The policy’s implementation has been barred in other suits; In Massachusetts, a federal judge blocked the transfer of a transgender woman to a man’s prison.

In a previous ruling last June entering the first preliminary injunction, Lamberth said the prisoners were likely to win on their claims that BOP’s policy violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Eighth Amendment. The injunction has been extended several times since then.

He also certified the suit as a class action, saying there are about 2,000 inmates in BOP custody who have gender dysphoria or meet the criteria for the diagnosis.

The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of the District of Columbia and the Transgender Law Center represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Kingdom v. Trump, D.D.C., No. 25-cv-691, 6/2/26.