Prison Officials Detail Treatment of Trans Inmates Under Trump Gender Order

The federal Bureau of Prisons is banning the use of preferred pronouns, stopping special pat-down procedures and rejecting underwear requests from transgender prisoners.

The Bureau of Prisons on Friday laid out strict new guidelines for the treatment of transgender inmates to comply with President Trump’s executive order on gender recognition, including ending special procedures for pat-down searches and barring prisoners from purchasing the underwear of their choice.

The guidelines, dated Feb. 21 and obtained by The New York Times, show the extraordinary steps that the federal government will have to take to comply with the president’s edict that there are only two sexes, established at conception, and that men who “self-identify as women” pose a threat to the safety of women.

The prison memo was issued on the same day that a new group of transgender women rushed to court to try to stop their transfer from all-female prisons to all-male facilities, saying that the move would place them at an elevated risk of physical and sexual violence. Already, a preliminary injunction issued Feb. 18 had blocked the transfer of three transgender women to male prisons.

But the new lawsuit said the bureau informed the trans women not participating in earlier suits that they were to be transferred to male prisons “imminently.”

The Bureau of Prison’s two-page memo details the treatment expected of transgender inmates at length. The guidelines require prison staff to refer to inmates by “their legal name or pronouns corresponding to their biological sex.”

It said that transgender women would no longer be shielded from pat-down searches by male guards and that they would no longer be permitted to buy bras and other women’s clothing at the commissary. Public funds would no longer be used to purchase items that bind breasts, remove hair or allow trans men to use urinals.