The US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to allow President Donald Trump’s administration to halt gender-affirming medical care to transgender prisoners while it appealed a lower court order requiring that the care be provided.
The court rejected the Justice Department’s emergency request for an immediate stop to the ruling while its legal challenge plays out. The short decision was issued without comment, but was opposed by conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the report said.
The policy, put in place after Trump became president in January 2025, would ban gender-affirming procedures, eliminate hormone therapy and stop providing such things as wigs and other items transgender inmates use to make themselves look more like their gender identity. Mental health treatment would continue.
Three transgender inmates were challenging the policy on the grounds that denying them necessary treatment could cause them serious harm and would violate their constitutional rights.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth barred the restrictions, determining that the US Bureau of Prisons did not offer enough evidence to warrant overturning a long-standing practice of the policy. The decision was later affirmed by a federal appeals court.
The prisoners’ advocates, the American Civil Liberties Union, cheered the Supreme Court ruling and said it would help.
This is a setback in Trump’s larger push to strip away transgender rights, though the case itself is far from settled.
