The injunctions had blocked transfers ordered under a January 2025 executive order directing the Attorney General to ensure that "males, defined as persons belonging at conception to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell," are not held in women's prisons or detention centers.
The eighteen plaintiffs, a subset of thousands of transgender women in federal custody, sued to block their transfers, contending that placement in men's facilities would expose them to "a substantial risk of grave harm" in violation of the Eighth Amendment.
The district court had granted preliminary injunctive relief on the ground that transgender women face an unconstitutional risk of harm in men's prisons. On appeal, the plaintiffs did not defend that rationale, which "categorically forbids placing any transgender woman in a men's prison."
Instead, they urged the appeals court to sustain the injunctions on a narrower theory, arguing the individual plaintiffs possess characteristics making them "particularly vulnerable to violence, abuse, and psychiatric harm in men's prisons."
The D.C. Circuit found the record did not include findings of fact about the individual plaintiffs' vulnerabilities or the reasons the Bureau had initially placed each plaintiff in a women's facility. The court vacated the operative injunctions and remanded.
On remand, the district court "remains free to consider whether the plaintiffs may be entitled to relief on plaintiff-specific grounds or other available grounds supported by further findings of fact."
Circuit Judge Pillard authored the opinion. Senior Circuit Judge Randolph filed a dissent. The case was consolidated with several other appeals from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.