Preserve Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender People in Federal Prisons

Oppose the Trump administration's attempt to strip hormone therapy from transgender people in federal prisons. In Trump v. Kingdom, the administration is asking the Supreme Court to let the Bureau of Prisons abruptly end care that its own agency has provided for over three decades. U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth blocked that policy, finding the sudden reversal of BOP's longstanding clinical practice arbitrary and capricious. That injunction should stand. This is not a policy dispute about ideology. It is a medical one. BOP has provided hormone therapy based on individual clinical assessments since at least 1992, and formalized those standards in its 2017 Transgender Offender Manual. Dr. Carl Streed, a primary care physician and transgender health researcher, has warned that abruptly withdrawing hormone therapy causes mood changes, cardiovascular risks, and bone health damage, with the greatest danger to patients whose bodies no longer produce sufficient hormones after surgery. "This is going to have direct harm on people," he said. Forcing providers to taper patients off medically necessary treatment is not a policy choice. It is harm.