An incarcerated transgender woman sued the Trump administration Sunday, challenging an executive order that requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to house transgender inmates according to their sex at birth and prevents prisoners from accessing gender-affirming medical care.
The order, which Trump signed on Jan. 20 during his first hours in office, recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and broadly prevents government dollars from being spent on what his administration calls “gender ideology.”
The order, which pledges to protect women and restore “biological truth to the federal government,” explicitly prohibits women’s prisons and detention centers from housing transgender female inmates. It tasks the incoming attorney general with ensuring BOP complies with the order and guaranteeing 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.”
BOP revised its transgender offender manual in 2022, restoring guidelines first instituted under former President Obama requiring federal prisons to consider the safety of transgender people when deciding where to house them and use trans inmates’ chosen names and pronouns.
During Trump’s first term, transgender people in federal prisons were housed based only on their sex at birth, though gender-affirming care was also available to some trans inmates during that time.
In a federal lawsuit filed Sunday in Massachusetts, plaintiff Maria Moe, a pseudonym used in court filings in place of her real name, argues Trump’s executive order violates the Fifth and Eighth amendments of the Constitution and bypasses necessary federal rulemaking processes.
“The Order directly targets transgender Americans by attempting to deny them legal recognition under federal law and to strip them of long-established legal protections,” reads the complaint, filed by GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the law firm Lowenstein Sandler LLP.
Moe’s lawsuit argues that “the timing, content, and context” of Trump’s executive order demonstrate it was motivated by “discriminatory animus” rather than any legitimate government purpose.
Moe came out as transgender in middle school and began taking hormones to treat her gender dysphoria at 15. “She is acknowledged, accepted, and treated as a woman by her peers, her friends, her close family,” according to the lawsuit.
Moe, who has no violent disciplinary history, has never been housed in a men’s facility, and until this month, her sex was listed as “female” on BOP records.
On Jan. 25, the same records identified her sex as “male” because of the executive order, according to Sunday’s lawsuit. Prison staff then moved Moe to a “special housing unit” away from the general population of the women’s facility where she had been housed. The name of the facility is redacted in court filings.
BOP officials told Moe they would soon transfer her to a men’s prison, a move she is unable to challenge because of the executive order.
The Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
