Supreme Court Keeps the Block on a Prison Policy Ending Gender-Affirming Care
In an emergency appeal, the justices left a lower court's injunction standing against a federal Bureau of Prisons policy that would have terminated hormone therapy and other treatments for transgender inmates. The order gave no explanation for the outcome.
Li Nowlin-Sohl, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer in the case, said the organization believes more than 2,000 people in Bureau of Prisons custody identify as transgender. The result, for now, is that the administration must keep providing gender-affirming care to transgender people in federal prisons.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
An unexplained order is still an outcome: the injunction survives, the policy cannot take effect, and no justice has to commit to a rationale in writing.
Silence is not consensus — Justices Thomas and Alito would have granted the stay, and the injunction holding does not settle the legal fight over the policy.