A transgender woman serving time in a federal prison has filed a lawsuit arguing that President Donald Trump's executive order directing the U.S. government to recognize only two, unchangeable sexes and requiring inmates like her to be housed in men's prisons violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law (lawsuit complaint available here).
Identified by the pseudonym Maria Moe, the plaintiff said that a day after the new president signed the order, the federal Bureau of Prisons informed her she was being transferred from a women's prison to a men's facility.
The Bureau of Prisons also switched how it publicly identified her from "female" to "male" and was poised to cut off access to hormones that she has taken since she was a teenager to treat her gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person's gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.
The lawsuit appeared to be the first to be filed nationally challenging the order, which directs the federal government to house transgender women in men's prisons and cease funding any gender-affirming medical care for people in prison.
The plaintiff's impending transfer to a men's prison would violate the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and depriving the plaintiff of medically necessary healthcare would violate a federal law known as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit seeks to maintain the preexisting housing and medical treatment.
Among the more than 140,000 people in federal prisons and jails, about 2,000 — roughly 1 percent — identify as transgender, according to Bureau of Prisons data reviewed by the Marshall Project. In 2022, the bureau spent $153,000 — or less than .01 percent of its overall healthcare budget — on gender-affirming care.
Only 10 trans women in federal prisons were housed in female prisons in 2023, the Marshall Project found.