Supreme Court Denies Trump Bid on Transgender Inmate Policy

By Marcus Bennett

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the Trump administration's request to let the Federal Bureau of Prisons implement a new policy barring transgender inmates from gender-transition surgeries, hormone therapy, and "social accommodations."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito indicated, without explanation, that they would have granted the application.

The denial leaves a lower-court order blocking the policy in place. The case, tracked by SCOTUSblog as Trump v. Kingdom, reached the justices through the court's emergency docket.

The brief order, posted to the Supreme Court's website on Wednesday, carried no written opinion.

What did the BOP policy seek to do?

The Bureau of Prisons policy would have removed three categories of care for transgender inmates. They were: gender-transition surgeries, hormone therapy, and what the policy calls "social accommodations."

"Social accommodations" covers housing assignments, clothing, and pronoun use inside federal correctional facilities. The administration's emergency application asked the justices to clear the way for the policy to take effect nationwide.

A lower court had blocked the policy before the administration appealed. Thomas and Alito's two-justice statement of dissent offered no reasoning.

Both justices have, in separate writings, urged the court to take up transgender-rights disputes. Their joint statement on Wednesday stopped short of a full opinion or written dissent.

Why is the border wall back at the court?

Hours after the transgender-inmate order, the Trump administration returned to the interim docket. It asked the justices to let construction of the border wall resume in the Big Bend region of southwestern Texas.

The case, tracked as Mullin v. Friends of the Ruidosa Church, sits in the court's emergency stream. Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog covered the dispute in the On Site section of her daily roundup.

The Big Bend region is a remote stretch of the Rio Grande in southwestern Texas. The administration's Wednesday filing asks the justices to lift a lower-court pause on construction in that specific stretch of borderland.

What is the Texas-DOJ deportation fight?

Also on Wednesday, three cities and a group that provides legal services to immigrants asked the court to pause a separate agreement. The agreement sits between Texas and the Department of Justice.

The agreement prevents enforcement of a Biden-era rule allowing immigration judges to pause certain deportation proceedings. The challengers, tracked by SCOTUSblog as City of Baltimore, Maryland v. Texas, filed their application on Wednesday.

Responses from the government were due by 4 p.m. EDT the same day. The Biden-era rule gave judges discretion to pause removal where a noncitizen had pending applications for relief, including asylum claims.

The Texas-DOJ agreement bars enforcement of that discretion. Three municipalities and the legal-services group argue the agreement exceeds both state and federal authority.

The application is the first step toward possible Supreme Court intervention. It does not automatically pause the underlying agreement.

What changes for practitioners?

For corrections counsel, the denial leaves the BOP policy on hold. Lower-court proceedings will continue, with no immediate path back to the high court.

For immigration practitioners, two emergency applications now sit on the interim docket. Both the border wall and the Texas-DOJ matters could produce rulings in the weeks ahead.

Practitioners should expect orders on both applications in the court's next emergency list. That list is typically released on Monday or Tuesday.

And in lighter news

Separately, Fort Circle Games is taking preorders for First Monday in October, a board game on the history of the Supreme Court. The company describes its work as developing "beautiful board games that are grounded in historical events," according to its website.

The game, available for preorder at fortcircle.com, arrives ahead of the holiday season. The SCOTUStoday team flagged it as a possible gift for Supreme Court followers and legal-history buffs.