WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration must continue providing transgender prisoners with hormone treatment and other gender-related care.
In a 7-2 decision, the high court left in place an order from a federal district judge who said the Bureau of Prisons hadn't adequately justified a new policy banning certain treatments and accommodations for people with gender dysphoria.
Under that policy, federal prisons would treat dysphoria with psychological therapy but wouldn't provide hormone therapy, clothing accommodations or sex-trait modification surgeries.
The Supreme Court's decision is a temporary measure that keeps the new policy on hold while litigation continues. It came in a one-sentence procedural order with no explanation. The court's two most conservative members -- Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -- dissented.
It is a rare loss for the Trump administration on the Supreme Court's emergency docket. In dozens of other cases, the high court has intervened on an emergency basis to allow the administration to implement policies that lower courts had blocked, including a ban on transgender people in the military.
About 2,000 transgender people are incarcerated in federal prisons nationwide. Only two people in federal custody have ever received sex-trait modification surgeries, according to a sworn statement from a prison official. But many transgender prisoners have received gender-affirming hormones and social accommodations under policies that have been in place for decades. As of last year, more than 600 federal prisoners were receiving hormone treatment, according to court documents.
Advocates say the care is medically necessary for transgender people who have acute mental health needs and are especially vulnerable in prisons. The Trump administration says that hormones, surgeries and social supports aren't appropriate treatments for gender dysphoria, and that they pose security risks in prisons.
On the first day of his second term, President Trump issued an executive order directing the Bureau of Prisons to stop using federal money to pay for any drug or procedure that has "the purpose of conforming an inmate's appearance to that of the opposite sex." The bureau adopted its new policy in February, but U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, blocked it from taking effect.