Trump Administration Appeals Supreme Court Ruling on Prisoner Policies
The Trump administration is reaching out to the Supreme Court of the United States following a decision by a district court that halted the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) from enforcing new policies for inmates with gender dysphoria.
In a filing made on a Monday, the administration, via the Department of Justice (DOJ), requested that SCOTUS overturn the ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They argue that the lower court did not properly consider the case.
“Without meaningfully engaging with either BOP’s reasoning or the administrative record, the district court prohibited BOP from applying its 2026 policy to any inmate who is or will be diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” the document stated.
As the proceedings unfold in both the lower court and the Supreme Court, the administration is seeking a stay on the preliminary injunction issued by District Judge Royce Lamberth. The judge found the policy’s enforcement likely illegal and potentially damaging.
After President Trump’s executive order, the BOP created a new policy that deems “sex-trait-modification surgeries, hormone interventions in general, and social accommodations” as unjustifiable treatments for gender dysphoria, according to court documents.
The filing indicates that the bureau’s decision partly stemmed from doubts about the reliability of recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which the BOP had previously relied on during the Biden administration. It also concluded that the purported “benefits” of such treatments did not outweigh other significant concerns.
“Second, those interventions raised security and prison-administration concerns that outweighed whatever limited benefits they had,” the document noted.
Nonetheless, the BOP has maintained that mental health care will still be available for those experiencing gender dysphoria, but it will no longer offer surgeries, hormone treatments, or social accommodations.
