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US President Donald Trump arrives before signing the Laken Riley Act into law in the East Room at the White House in Washington on January 29, 2025. The law, named after a Georgia student murdered by an undocumented immigrant is the first bill of the second Trump administration (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA/Sipa via AP Images).
The first lawsuit filed against the anti-transgender policies of the Trump administration has secured a victory in federal court — for now.
Earlier this week, a judge in Boston issued a temporary restraining order stopping federal prison officials from transferring a transgender woman inmate to a men’s lockup facility. The ruling also bars officials from blocking her access to gender-affirming medical care.
The inmate, identified in court documents as Maria Moe, sued the federal government earlier this week over the Jan. 20 executive order signed by President Donald Trump which purports to defend women from “gender ideology extremism” and restore “biological truth.”
Moe began identifying as a woman when she was in middle school and was able to begin a regimen of hormone therapy for gender dysphoria at age 15, according to her lawyers. Since being incarcerated, she had been housed in a women’s facility — until Trump signed the executive order. After that, she was placed in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) while awaiting transfer to a men’s prison, according to her lawsuit.
The original petition was filed on Jan. 26, and the case was sealed. That day, Senior U.S. District Judge George O’Toole issued the temporary restraining order, Moe’s lawyers told the Reuters wire service on Thursday.
Also on Thursday, other filings in the case were unsealed — with the majority of the documents still kept under judicial lock and key — amid a flurry of activity including oral arguments in which the government appears to have argued that Moe chose the wrong procedural way to attack the government’s anti-transgender policy.
The extent to which the government’s arguments in the case are public, however, relies on the characterizations in the plaintiff’s reply — because the defendants have yet to file a document on the record, according to the federal court docket as of this writing.
In the plaintiff’s latest filing, dated Jan. 29, but docketed the next day, Moe’s attorneys rubbish the government’s approach.
“Unable to defend these policies on their merits, Defendants argue that Ms. Moe must pursue her claims through habeas rather than civil rights litigation, that her claims are not ripe, and that this Court should defer to their decisions to transfer her to a men’s facility,” the latest publicized motion in the case reads. “These arguments fail.”
Moe should not have to file a habeas claim because she is not challenging “the fact or duration of confinement or specific alleged misconduct” by Bureau of Prisons officials, her motion says.
Instead, the lawsuit is premised on an alleged violation of constitutional rights — a challenge against a new policy directed at an “entire class” of people, according to the latest filing.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that for such broad policy challenges, injunctive relief is appropriate,” the motion reads.
Aside from a civil rights claim, the lawsuit essays other legal theories the court could rule on to keep Moe from being transferred.
One avenue is the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which often blocks an administrative agency’s action when it can be shown that what the government is doing is “arbitrary and capricious.”
Moe says that’s exactly what happened here when BOP officials made moves to comply with the 45th and 47th president’s “mandate to house transgender women in male facilities.”
“The Executive Order directly contradicts the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and its implementing federal regulations,” the latest motion argues — noting that the PREA is subject to the rulemaking requirements of the APA.
This section of the latest filing echoes the lawsuit — which eschews legalese and dashes through terms of art to state Moe’s case in real terms.
“In a men’s facility, Maria Moe will be at extremely high risk of rape and sexual assault,” the complaint alleges. “She may also be subjected to humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous circumstances like being strip searched by male correctional officers and forced to shower among men, with her female body, including her breasts, exposed and vulnerable to sexual violence.”
The latest motion elaborates on such potential harms, at length:
If transferred to a men’s facility, Ms. Moe faces a very high risk of physical violence and sexual assault. If denied continuation of her medically necessary hormone therapy, her gender dysphoria will worsen, with severe negative consequences for her physical and mental health. Defendants make no real attempt to show that Ms. Moe does not face these serious harms. … The severe threats that enforcement of the Order would pose to Ms. Moe’s physical and mental health and safety are more than sufficient to demonstrate irreparable harm warranting preliminary relief.
In other words, and explicitly in the motion, Moe is asking for the court “to preserve the status quo.”
“The severe and documented harms to health and safety that Ms. Moe faces far outweigh Defendants’ blithe appeal to deference,” the motion argues.
The government, Moe’s attorneys say, has not offered fact-based arguments specific to the present case. Instead, the plaintiffs say, the government has relied on process arguments and the notion of extending deference to the executive branch.
“Defendants do not attempt to show that they or the public would suffer any meaningful harm if the Court grants Ms. Moe interim relief from enforcement of the Order,” the motion goes on. “Instead, they ask the Court to defer to the judgment of the Executive Branch. No deference is warranted, however, when government policy violates fundamental constitutional liberties.”
The temporary restraining order won by the plaintiff, however, is a quick fix and not likely to remain in effect very long. Attorney Jennifer Levi said her client “is staying put for now,” according to Reuters.
O’Toole, a Bill Clinton appointee, is still mulling over whether to issue a preliminary injunction in the case — which would maintain the status quo for much longer while the case plays out in the court system.
