The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must continue providing gender-affirming care to transgender inmates in federal prisons. The decision, in an emergency appeal, maintains a lower court's injunction on a federal Bureau of Prisons' policy that would terminate hormone therapy and other treatments for trans inmates. The order offered no explanation behind the decision.
It simply read, "The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied." It also said Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would side with the Trump administration and would grant the application for stay. A federal district judge barred the BOP from implementing its policy this summer. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, also rejected the administration's request to pause U.S.
District Judge Royce Lamberth's order. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to intervene. As the federal judge's injunction remains in place, the legal battle over the policy continues.
Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer involved in this case, said the organization believes there are more than 2,000 people in BOP custody who identify as transgender. (The BOP stopped publishing data reflecting transgender inmates after Trump took office in 2025. It only records male or female individuals incarcerated in the federal system.) Kingdom v. Trump represents 1,000 inmates who have a gender dysphoria diagnosis, Nowlin-Sohl explained.
Of those, the ACLU believes there are about 800 who have been prescribed hormone therapy and many who are also receiving social transition accommodations, Nowlin-Sohl said. In its request for an emergency stay on the earlier rulings, the Trump administration argued that providing this care poses several risks, including for recipients of this specialized care, who it argued would become "targets for attacks." They also said that it raises "fairness concerns" as it would "breed resentment" with other inmates. Access to gender-affirming care is considered medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria, a medical term used to describe the deep discomfort caused by a mismatch between a person's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity.
Without it, individuals can struggle severely with mental health issues such as heightened anxiety and depression, with some turning to self-harm and suicide. Gender-affirming care can include "...hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries among others," according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. (In its filings, the Trump administration questioned WPATH's standards of care, which were developed by experts in transgender health and used by organizations across the world.) Some people who are transgender may require hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries; others may not require any of these interventions. The BOP has treated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria since at least 1992, the ACLU said in response to the government's filings to the Supreme Court.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
