The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow its policy limiting gender-affirming treatment for federal inmates to take effect while a legal challenge plays out in court.
In an application, the government argued that lower court rulings halting the Federal Bureau of Prisons policy nationwide pose “security and prison-administrative concerns.”
“Indeed, this Court has emphasized the importance of allowing politically accountable officials to make decisions about the permissible forms of treatment for gender dysphoria, and the need for such policymaking ‘flexibility’ is even greater in the context of prison administration,” the application says.
The Trump administration filing also contends inmates would still be provided “appropriate, individualized treatment for gender dysphoria, while disallowing only interventions that are medically unnecessary.”
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The case stems from an executive order President Donald Trump issued in his first days in office that sought to limit gender-affirming care for transgender people in federal prisons and immigration detention centers.
The Bureau of Prisons, which oversees the nation’s roughly 153,000 federal inmates, adopted its current policy in February, barring surgeries, hormone therapy and social accommodations for inmates with gender dysphoria.
In an accompanying memo, prison officials said gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.” The new policy focused instead on providing inmates with therapy and psychotropic medication for gender dysphoria.
Under previous rules developed nearly a decade ago, federal prisons allowed a range of surgeries, hormones and social support for inmates who were transitioning.
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups on behalf of three federal inmates with gender dysphoria challenges the Trump administration’s moves, saying the inmates would lose access to medically necessary care.
The suit alleges violations of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” as well as other constitutional and administrative claims.
In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth blocked the policy nationwide, finding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed at least on their claim that the government didn’t follow required procedures in developing the policy.
The prisons bureau, Lamberth ruled, had not taken into account its “own experience providing gender-affirming care to inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria for many years under its prior policy.”
“The government does not point the Court to evidence that gender-affirming care was ineffective or harmful to its own inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or that providing this care previously led to security concerns at BOP facilities,” he wrote.
The judge did not address the plaintiffs’ constitutional claims, saying he wanted to avoid “wading into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals.”
This month, an appeals court declined to put Lamberth’s ruling on hold while the case proceeds.
In the application to the Supreme Court, the government argues that Lamberth should have deferred to prison officials and said they should not have to provide him additional evidence justifying the policy. The district court, the filing said, was “substituting its own policy judgment for that of the agency.”
The ACLU said Monday in an emailed statement that the policy threatened the well-being of transgender inmates.
“The withholding of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, from people in prison violates their Constitutional right to serve their sentence free of cruel and unusual punishment,” the group said.
The attempt to prohibit gender-affirming care in federal prisons is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to use the federal government to roll back services and restrict rights for transgender people.
Last month, the administration announced a new rule aimed at preventing Medicaid and the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program from funding gender-affirming care for children.
In June, an appeals court ruled that an administration policy barring transgender people from serving in the military was unconstitutional and “driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”
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