US judge blocks Trump from sending transgender women to men's prisons

A US judge on Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from implementing the Republican's executive order requiring all transgender women be housed in federal prisons for men and ending their access to gender-affirming care.

The decision by US District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington marked the second time that a federal judge had at the urging of LGBTQ legal rights groups prevented the US Bureau of Prisons from implementing the order Trump signed on his first day back in office on Jan 20.

Lamberth's order goes further than a Jan. 26 decision by a federal judge in Boston blocking prison officials from transferring a transgender woman to a men's facility by preventing the administration from implementing the policy at all without a further court order.

Trump's executive order directed the federal government to only recognize two, biologically distinct sexes, male and female; house transgender women in men's prisons; and cease funding for any gender-affirming medical care for inmates.

About 2,230 transgender inmates are housed in federal custodial facilities and halfway houses, according to the US Department of Justice. About two thirds of them, 1,506, are transgender women, 16 of whom are housed in women's prisons.

Prior to Trump's order, the Bureau of Prisons had been operating under guidelines adopted in 2022 during Democratic former President Joe Biden's tenure requiring prisons to consider inmates' "current gender expression" when deciding where to house them.