A judge on Wednesday ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer two transgender women inmates back to federal women’s prisons after they had been sent to men’s facilities in the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive order that truncated transgender protections. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington issued a preliminary injunction after the women were added as plaintiffs in ongoing litigation over the impact of Trump’s executive order on transgender women in federal prisons, the Associated Press reports. Lamberth ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to “immediately transfer” the two women – identified in court papers by the pseudonyms Rachel and Ellen Doe – back to women’s facilities and said the agency must continue to provide them with hormone therapy treatment for gender dysphoria.
The women said in court papers that they were living in constant fear of sexual assault and other violence after being moved to male prisons. Male inmates repeatedly propositioned them for sex and male officers subjected them strip searches without female officers present, they said. “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,” Lamberth wrote. The preliminary injunction is the latest in a series of rulings thwarting the agency’s efforts to comply with the executive order, which calls for housing transgender women in men’s prisons, and for halting gender-affirming medical care Lamberth, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, previously blocked the bureau from transferring a dozen other transgender women inmates to men’s prisons.