Supreme Court Blocks Trump Bid to Cut Trans Inmate Care

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to let the Trump administration enforce a policy stripping transgender people in federal prison of gender-transition care. The brief order gave no explanation. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would have sided with the administration.

The ruling keeps a lower-court injunction in place, so the Bureau of Prisons can't bar gender-transition surgeries, hormone treatments or social accommodations for the roughly 1,000 transgender inmates in federal custody. Under the blocked policy, those inmates would have received only mental-health services and potentially medications such as antidepressants.

Who Is Affected

The lead plaintiffs, Alishea Kingdom, Jas Kapule and Solo Nichols, had each received hormone treatment for several years. They sued with support from the American Civil Liberties Union, arguing the government hadn't adequately explained the change and had violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. ACLU lawyers noted that the bureau had provided hormone therapy since 1992 and gradually expanded access to other treatments and accommodations.

The policy followed Trump's January 2025 executive order directing federal agencies not to acknowledge gender identity outside the "immutable biological classification" of male or female. Over the last 18 months, the Bureau of Prisons announced several times that it wouldn't provide surgery, hormone treatments or accommodations such as wigs, padding or makeup. The administration said medical professionals had recently called the treatments into question. Transgender-rights advocates strongly contest that claim.

What the Courts Found

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Republican appointee, blocked the policy earlier this year. He found that the Bureau of Prisons had failed to consider the merits of its previous treatment policies and that the proposal appeared engineered to comply with Trump's executive order, with its stated reasons serving as pretext.

"Despite providing gender-affirming care to inmates in its custody for years, the government cites in the Program Statement zero evidence from its own medical or mental health professionals to support its conclusions," Lamberth wrote. He added that the government offered no evidence the previous plan was "ineffective or harmful."

In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected the administration's request to block Lamberth's final decision in a 2-1 ruling. ACLU lawyers argued that the unexplained change "gives rise to the inference that the agency's purported reasons were not its actual reasons." They said the omission and the decision's unreasonableness showed the rationales were contrived to support the demand Trump made in the executive order.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer countered in court papers that the lower court was "substituting its own policy judgment for that of the agency" and faulting the bureau for following the president's executive order.

A Rare Win

This outcome is unusual for a court with a 6-3 conservative majority. In June, the justices upheld state bans on transgender athletes competing in women's and girls' sports. A year earlier, they backed state laws banning gender-transition treatments for transgender youths. The court has also allowed Trump to implement a ban on transgender people serving in the military.

Other Fronts

The ruling came as other disputes over the administration's reach continued. Democrats filed a lawsuit against Trump and the Justice Department, alleging officials were unlawfully interfering with the midterms by pressuring states to remove voters from their rolls. The complaint alleges a "persistent stream of threats and intimidation" directed at state and local election officials.

Trump also discussed moving the White House press corps to another building, two people close to him said. Outside allies, including former strategist Steve Bannon, pushed the idea. No final decision has been made. Last month, a federal judge reinstated press credentials for CNN, MS NOW and Politico after Trump tried to bar them from the White House complex, finding the ban likely violated the First Amendment and the outlets' right to due process.

On Tuesday, Trump denied involvement in a reported slowdown of SpaceX's Starlink service in Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter, reported that Elon Musk ordered it and discussed it with Trump. "I wasn't involved," Trump said.

Why This Matters: The Supreme Court's order doesn't settle the larger question of how far an administration can go in rewriting medical care for people in its custody, but it keeps treatment in place for about 1,000 federal inmates while the case proceeds. Judge Lamberth's finding that the government offered no evidence from its own medical professionals puts a basic accountability question in focus: should a policy affecting people's health rest on documented clinical reasoning, or on a presidential directive? Prisoners can't choose their doctors. The state controls every part of their care. Courts may be one of the few checks they have.