By Nate Raymond and Mike Scarcella
BOSTON (Reuters) – A transgender woman serving in a federal prison has filed a lawsuit arguing that President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the U.S. government to recognize only two, unchangeable sexes and requiring inmates like her to be housed in men’s prisons violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
In a lawsuit filed on Sunday in Boston federal court, the inmate, who is being represented by lawyers at rights groups including GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, took aim at an order Trump signed on his first day back in office on Jan. 20 targeting what he called “gender ideology extremism.”
The lawsuit appeared to be the first to be filed nationally challenging the order, which directs the federal government to only recognize two, biologically distinct sexes, male and female; house transgender women in men’s prisons; and cease funding any gender-affirming medical care for inmates.
Trump’s executive order discriminated based on sex in violation of the plaintiff’s due process rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by requiring prison officials to treat incarcerated people differently depending on their sex, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiff’s impending transfer to a men’s prison also would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and depriving the plaintiff of medically necessary healthcare would violate a federal law known as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was accessed by Reuters on Sunday but was later sealed for unclear reasons.
An attorney for the inmate declined to comment.
The U.S. Justice Department, which oversees the federal Bureau of Prisons, declined to comment.
Identified by the pseudonym Maria Moe, the plaintiff said that a day after the Republican president signed the order, officials with the federal Bureau of Prisons informed her she was being transferred from a women’s prison to a men’s facility.
The lawsuit also said the Bureau of Prisons switched how it publicly identified her from “female” to “male” and was poised to cut off the inmate’s access to hormones that she has taken since she was a teenager to treat her gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex assigned at birth.
The inmate’s lawyers argued that if she were transferred to a men’s facility, she would be at an “extremely high risk of harassment, abuse, violence, and sexual assault.”
The lawsuit seeks to maintain Moe’s preexisting housing and medical treatment and asks a judge to declare that Trump’s executive order violates her constitutional rights.
The lawsuit did not specify the crime for which the plaintiff was convicted.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston and Mike Scarcella in Washington, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)
