The litigation followed a January 20, 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump directing the Attorney General to ensure that males are not detained in women's prisons. The Bureau of Prisons then prepared to transfer the plaintiffs — a group it had previously determined should be housed in women's facilities — to men's institutions.
The plaintiffs sued to block the transfers, arguing that incarceration in men's facilities would expose them to a substantial risk of grave harm in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The district court granted preliminary injunctive relief, reasoning that transgender women face an unconstitutional risk of harm in men's prisons.
On appeal, the plaintiffs did not defend the district court's categorical reasoning. They instead urged the D.C. Circuit to sustain the injunctions on the narrower ground that the individual plaintiffs possess specific characteristics making them particularly vulnerable to violence, abuse, and psychiatric harm in men's prisons.
The panel held the record was insufficient to support that theory. It found no factual findings regarding the individual plaintiffs' vulnerabilities or the reasons the Bureau had relied on when placing them in women's facilities in the first place.
The court vacated the operative preliminary injunctions and sent the case back. The district court remains free to consider whether the plaintiffs are entitled to relief on those or other grounds, provided such relief is supported by further findings of fact and analysis.
Circuit Judge Pillard wrote the opinion. Senior Circuit Judge Randolph filed a dissent. The appeal was consolidated with several other challenges to the same Bureau of Prisons policy.