Trump Executive Order Forces Trans Women into Men’s Prison
One of many executive orders issued by Trump in the first week of his second term is facing litigatory pushback for allegedly violating two amendments to the constitution by sending trans women to men’s prison facilities and denying them access to necessary medication.
by Alyssa Steinsiek
So begins a very long four years in which every vile move the Trump administration makes is challenged in a court of law by the innocent people he’s harmed. In this particular case, the aggrieved parties are transgender inmates at federal prisons… and it cannot be overstated just how right they are to sue, and how important it is that they receive both injunctive relief in the short-term, and a long-term win in a courtroom.
Though Trump signed many, many, many executive orders during his first week (and, in fact, his first day) in office, the order relevant to this story is titled, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” because brevity is the soul of wit. At its core, the order states that the United States government only recognizes two genders, male and female, and that a person’s gender cannot be changed and must be reflected “accurately” (or inaccurately, if you have both feet firmly planted in this reality) on any official government documents.
Defining transgender people out of existence at the federal level is reprehensible enough, but another, more sinister change to federal law was buried in the bill: A change to “Part 115.41 of title 28, Code of Federal Regulations,” better known as the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Under the Obama and Biden administrations, the scope of PREA was expanded to protect transgender inmates from invasive searches of inmates’ genitalia to determine gender; determining prison housing assignments based on gender identity; and allowing transgender inmates to use bathrooms and housing facilities that matched their self-identified gender.
Trump’s new executive order, however, rolls back these changes and forces federal prisons and PREA-compliant state prisons that receive federal funding to house inmates based on a myopic understanding of sex assigned at birth. What’s more, transgender inmates at these facilities will now be denied the life saving gender-affirming medical care they have a right to.
Though some parts of the order will require work submitted to and approved by Congress, there are already transgender women being transferred to men’s facilities as we speak. For a minority group already subject to significantly higher rates of sexual assault and violence, this is an absolute nightmare scenario.
The lawsuit against Trump and his ilk states that the executive order “directly targets transgender Americans by attempting to deny them legal recognition under federal law and to strip them of long-established legal protections,” and notes that the order violates the US Constitution’s fifth amendment for deprivation of equal protection under the law, as well as the eighth amendment for the cruel and unusual punishment of transferring the plaintiff to a male facility and denying her medically necessary healthcare. There is significant precedence for this.
According to filing documents acquired by Reuters, the plaintiff was moved from general populace to the Special Housing Unit, which is segregated, one day after Trump signed the executive order. She was informed by prison officials that she would be transferred to a male housing unit because of the executive order, though as of now she remains segregated and has had no contact with anybody for several days.
The plaintiff in this particular suit began transitioning in her teens, has always been identified by the carceral system as a woman, and has been taking cross-sex hormones her entire adult life. In spite of these facts, she is at risk of being placed in an extremely dangerous environment based on poor pseudoscience used to justify a culture war against the transgender community. Her counsel are seeking an injunction to stay the transfer to a men’s facility while her case is argued in court.
We can only hope that she, and the other nearly 2,000 transgender people currently in federal custody, receive the protection they deserve from this heinous act of violence against our entire community.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
