Judge blocks Trump’s executive order on transgender prisoners
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from moving transgender women prisoners into men’s facilities or taking away their medical care.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, ruled Tuesday night that the policy — which Trump laid out in an executive order on his first day back in office — would likely violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
The number of transgender women in federal women’s prisons or halfway houses is extremely small: only about 16 nationwide, according to the Justice Department. Of the roughly 2,230 federal inmates who are transgender, more than 99 percent are housed in facilities according to their biological sex, the department said in court papers.
