Trans BOP Prisoners Win Restraining Order Preventing Transfer to Men’s Prison, Discontinuation of Hormone Therapy Medication
On February 4, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted three “male-to-female transgender women” imprisoned by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) a temporary restraining order (TRO). The order prevented BOP from transferring the prisoners to a men’s prison and from discontinuing administration of their prescribed hormone therapy medication. The district court subsequently allowed nine other trans BOP prisoners to join the suit, extending the TRO to protect them until August 2025.
On January 20, 2025, Pres. Donald Trump (R) signed an Executive Order that required government officials to “ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.” The order further required the BOP to revise its policies to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” As PLN reported, a trans BOP prisoner identified as “Maria Moe” then succeeded in winning a TRO from the federal court for the District of Massachusetts on January 26, 2025, preventing her transfer to a men’s lockup. [See: PLN, Mar. 2025, p.43.]
The three prisoners who filed their complaint in the D.C. district court a little over a week later also asked for a TRO, fearing that they would be transferred to a men’s prison and that their hormone therapy medication would be discontinued. The district court then found that the prisoners fit within the “dead end” exception to the administrative remedy exhaustion requirement of the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, as outlined in Ross v. Blake, 578 U.S. 632 (2016). Since the BOP has no discretion to act contrary to the Executive Order, the district court said, there is “nothing to exhaust.”
Having found that it had jurisdiction over the matter, the district court considered the merits of the TRO motion. The prisoners’ complaint noted that they suffer from gender dysphoria, “a condition marked by significant distress and a host of physiological and psychological symptoms when a person lives in a manner conforming to their biological sex,” the district court noted. They were treated for several years before and including their time in BOP custody with prescribed hormone therapy.
The prisoners lodged Eighth Amendment claims for failure to protect and deliberate indifference to their serious medical needs, which first required a showing that they faced an “objectively intolerable risk of harm.” The threatened transfer met that standard, the district court decided, based upon “various government reports and regulations” that recognize “transgender persons are at a significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence relative to other inmates when housed in a facility corresponding their biological sex.” In particular, with respect to the threatened discontinuation of their medication, the prisoners filed “an affidavit from a physician explaining the numerous and severe symptoms that may arise from a failure to treat gender dysphoria,” the district court noted.
In addition, the prisoners needed to show that Defendants were “subjectively aware” that they were placing Plaintiffs in harm’s way. The BOP did not dispute that it was subjectively aware that transferring the three prisoners “to a male prison would substantially increase the likelihood of them experiencing [a] parade of harms.”
The district court, therefore, found the prisoners demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits and that the other TRO factors favored their claim, too. The TRO was thus granted, and the BOP was prohibited from enforcing the relevant provisions of the Executive Order. The expanded roster of Plaintiffs was then granted an extension of the TRO protections through August 23, 2025, by an injunction granted on May 15, 2025. PLN will continue to update developments as they unfold.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from Rosen Bien Glavan & Grunfeld LLP in San Francisco, Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP in Baltimore, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders in Boston, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights in Sacramento. See: Doe v. McHenry, 763 F. Supp. 3d 81 (D.D.C. 2025); and Doe v. Bondi, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108959 (D.D.C.).
Related legal cases
Doe v. McHenry
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 763 F. Supp. 3d 81 (D.D.C. 2025) |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Bench Verdict |
| District Court Edition | F.Supp.3d |
Doe v. Bondi
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 108959 (D.D.C.) |
| Level | District Court |