Two weeks ago, I reported on Donald Trump’s Executive Order to remove so-called “trans-female” prisoners from women’s prisons.
Why such a plan to remove men from women's-only detention facilities should spark controversy, no reasonable person can be certain. But, as I noted at the close of my January 27 piece, the battle over incarcerated “trans” people is just one of many facets of federal sentencing, prison operations, and jurisprudence that all collectivized policing systems introduce. On a philosophical level, any collectivist system forces together people who have differing opinions as to how that system should operate.
And February 4, D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth expressed some of those differing opinions as he issued a temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s order.
Neil Munro reports for Breitbart about the case, which literally is called “Doe v. McHenry,” since the identities of the prisoners have, for some reason, been kept secret. The case got a hearing from Judge Lamberth, who sided with the plaintiffs and their attorneys as they:
“cited … various government reports and regulations recognizing that transgender persons are at a significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence relative to other inmates when housed in a facility corresponding to their biological sex — which the defendants do not dispute…”
But that could be said of many kinds of prisoners. Age, height, weight, arm length, prior hand-to-hand combat training, eyesight, reflexes – they all vary for every inmate.
So, considerations such as the physical differences between “unadulterated/not-mutilated” males and “adulterated/mutilated” males pretending to be women ought not be a consideration any more than the differences between 6-foot-tall male inmates and 5-foot-tall inmates. And if one accepts the trans argument, that opens a virtual Pandora’s Box of additional considerations for separate inmate facilities based on physical differences between men.
And Judge Lamberth went even further, blocking another seemingly sensible Trump move. Trump also had ordered that our tax money no longer be used to help male prisoners “adulterate” their bodies.
The judge wants us to keep paying.
“The judge also blocked the transfer because Trump’s policy denies the offer of cross-sex hormones to the men.”
In other words, Judge Lamberth is denying US the choice to say, “no,” and forcing real women to remain trapped in prison with men.
As I noted in January, the Daily Caller cites the Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics, revealing the fact that there are 10,047 total inmates in women’s federal facilities, and of that total, 1,538 are biological males.
That is, of course, more than fifteen percent. And the presence of men in the female prison population already has resulted in sexual predation.
The Daily Caller in January observed:
“Several incidents of rape and sexual assault involving biological male inmates in female facilities have surfaced in recent years. A biological male at Rikers Island in New York City was convicted in 2022 of raping a female inmate while housed in the women’s prison wing. A similar case occurred in 2024, where another biological male was convicted in California of raping a female inmate in the showers of the prison’s female facilities.”
And, as I note this week for MRCTV, writing on another DC District Court Judge temporarily blocking Trump’s attempt to suspend thousands of USAID employees, there is a major matter of the separation of powers at stake.
Strictly speaking, a judge has no enforcement power. Trump’s Executive Branch is supposed to enforce constitutional laws and not enforce unconstitutional laws.
Thus, if the feds are engaging in the unconstitutional activity of funding so-called “hormone therapy” for men posting as females, Trump has a sworn duty to stop enforcing the policy.
Likewise, if the feds or states are putting women in danger by adding men to their prison populations, Trump has a sworn duty – based on the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of “Equal Protection” under state laws – to remove the men from the federal women's prisons or to demand that states remove men from state women's prisons.
These are bedrock principles of US governance, but Judge Lamberth overlooks them, focusing, instead, on the men who are choosing to damage their bodies and who are demanding to be put in the female population, regardless of the females trapped there.
In fact, Judge Lamberth flips the narrative, and cites the Eighth Amendment as a reason the MEN SHOULD BE PLACED AMONG FEMALES.
“’The request for a temporary restraining order is GRANTED on the narrow grounds of the plaintiffs’ Eighth Amendment claims’ for constitutional protections, the judge wrote.”
This opens the door to future complaints from various “differently abled” male prisoners calling for completely separate prison housing and accommodations – and those would be based on real, natural differences, not based on the desires that some men have to pretend to be women.
Related: Judge Blocks Trump's Move to Slash USAID Workforce Amidst Legal Battles
Of course, all this nonsense stems from the fact that the prisons are a collectivist system run by the government and we have no real say as to how we would want them run, or if we would like to pay for them or not.
Essentially, we are imprisoned to pay for their prison system, and if we don’t want to pay, they literally will throw us in prison.
Judge Lamberth’s “restraining order” concludes by stating he retains the discretion to lift it or keep it running, unless the case is heard by a higher-level federal court.
But Trump can, and actually is obligated to, take the action. He swears an oath to the Constitution and not to unconstitutional statutes, and he can make a far better argument that putting men into women’s prisons violates the women’s Eighth Amendment-protected rights than men who pretend to be women and who claim “gender dysphoria” can claim that being with other males of all sizes and ages is “cruel and unusual punishment.”
It is more likely that Trump will appeal this, all the way to the Supreme Court, where the majority likely will rule in his favor, but right now, as a matter of constitutional scholarship, we can see in this battle the importance of the oath Trump and any President takes to protect and defend the Constitution, and see that he can and should operate accordingly.