A federal judge has ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to send two male prisoners back to women’s prisons, in a preliminary injunction against President Trump’s Executive Order preventing men from being housed with women.
US District Court Judge Royce Lamberth said the prisoners must be sent back to their previous holding facilities “immediately” and, moreover, their hormone-therapy treatments must be resumed, at taxpayer cost.
“The fact that they have already been transferred and, allegedly, have been abused at their new facilities can only strengthen their claims of irreparable harm,” Judge Lamberth wrote of the plaintiffs in the case, who are identified only as “Rachel” and “Ellen Doe.”
In court filings, the plaintiffs said they were living in constant fear of sexual violence in the male prisons they now reside in. They said they were subject to strip searches by male guards, without female guards present, and that they had been propositioned for sex by male guards as well.
On the day of his inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order, “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.” Among other things, the order prohibits men from occupying women’s spaces and cuts federal funding from being used to pay for gender-transition therapy for prisoners.
Male prisoners who have transitioned to female have been accused of assaulting women after being transferred to female prisons.
For example, Christopher Williams, a 6’4” convicted pedophile, is at the center of a lawsuit alleging he abused female inmates he shared a prison cell with in Washington State.