On April 29, U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clark of the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon issued a preliminary injunction blocking the incarceration of transgender women in men’s prisons and ordering the Oregon Department of Corrections to conduct individualized safety assessments of transgender inmates, in direct contradiction to President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring inmates to be housed according to their sex assigned at birth.
The lawsuit stems from a class action lawsuit filed by two inmates on behalf of current and future transgender inmates, accusing the state of failing to protect transgender women from sexual and physical violence by housing them in male prisons.
Clark said the preliminary injunction is not as comprehensive as it appears because it requires correctional officers to follow the same practices they have already advocated. But he noted that despite individual assessments, more than 90% of transgender women in Oregon’s prison system are housed in men’s prisons.
Clark said the current system appears to operate under the assumption that transgender women should generally be housed in men’s prisons, with rare exceptions. He argued that transgender women should be presumed to be accommodated according to their gender identity.
“The court record is undisputed that this default presumption and placement in overwhelmingly male prisons places transgender female prisoners at increased risk of violence and sexual assault,” Clark wrote in a 38-page opinion. “The undisputed facts further demonstrate that ODOC systematically failed to adequately address this revelation.”
The injunction is valid for 90 days and can be renewed at the request of the inmate who filed the lawsuit, identified only by his initials. Clark also ordered a status report within a month to determine whether the Department of Corrections is complying with the injunction.
According to state data, 117 inmates have identified as transgender women while in custody. Of those, 26 sought housing at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the state’s women’s prison, but only eight are currently housed there.
Clark found that the state attorney’s argument that some transgender women want to be placed in men’s prisons because they are not ready to come out as transgender cannot be supported.
The state also argued that housing transgender women at Coffee Creek could endanger cisgender female inmates, putting them at risk of sexual assault from “potential convicted sex offenders who may not be truthful about the gender identity they claimed at the time of incarceration.”
Lawyers for the state claimed they knew of at least one person in a women’s prison who falsely claimed to be transgender in order to prey on female inmates. But Clark found that the state has failed to provide supporting evidence “for even a single instance of alleged misrepresentation of transgender identity.”
“Courts are not naive. It is extremely difficult to accommodate people with complex situations that are both ‘vulnerable’ and ‘aggressive,'” Clark wrote in his opinion. “However, there is no denying that keeping transgender women victims in men’s prisons is a markedly different treatment than that of cisgender women, for whom incarceration in men’s facilities is never an option, regardless of their history of violence or sexual assault.”
Plaintiffs’ attorney John Burgess said the judge’s ruling does not require transgender inmates to be automatically transferred to women’s prisons.
“States are required to start with a baseline of providing housing consistent with gender identity while allowing decisions based on personal safety,” Burgess said. oregonian. “We believe the court reached the correct result, and this preliminary injunction is an important first step in bringing ODOC’s housing program into constitutional compliance.”
However, this decision conflicts with the federal government’s current policy regarding housing transgender prisoners. Shortly after taking office last year, President Donald Trump refused to recognize transgender identity as valid and issued an executive order directing transgender female prisoners to be housed in men’s prisons. Those provisions are: supported Last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the Trump administration to transfer 18 transgender inmates from a women’s prison to a men’s facility.
To comply with President Trump’s order, the Justice Department also ordered the inspector general of prisons to halt evaluations of key safeguards created under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which was intended to prevent sexual violence against transgender, intersex, and gender nonconforming inmates.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
