The Department of Justice (DOJ) said on March 26 that it will investigate prison housing policies in California and Maine, looking into whether putting transgender inmates in women’s facilities violates the constitutional rights of female prisoners.
The DOJ cited “allegations of sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive climate of sexual intimidation due to the presence of males in the women’s prison.”
“Keeping men out of women’s prisons is not only common sense—it’s a matter of safety and constitutional rights,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “The Trump Administration will not stand by if governors are facilitating the abuse of biological women under the guise of inclusion.”
The investigations will involve female prisoners at the California Institution for Women, the Central California Women’s Facility, and the Maine Correctional Center.
The DOJ stated that under California law, “men in state prisons, including violent felons charged with sex crimes and who have intact genitals, can request transfer to women’s prisons based on self-identification as transgender.”
In Maine, the DOJ will investigate allegations that the state has “allowed a biological male inmate to remain housed with women despite complaints that the male inmate has assaulted or harassed several female inmates.”
The DOJ said the investigation is being conducted under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act. That federal law allows the DOJ to examine conditions in state prisons, jails, and other public institutions.
“These investigations will uncover whether the dangerous national trend of housing men in women’s prisons has resulted in violations of women’s constitutional rights,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement.
On the day he returned to the White House, Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government.”
That order prohibits males from being “detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers.” It requires males who identify as transgender in federal prisons to be housed in men’s prisons.
A complaint challenging the executive order was filed on Jan. 30, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. A federal judge initially issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement, followed days later by a preliminary injunction preventing the Federal Bureau of Prisons from transferring the plaintiffs to men’s facilities.
In granting relief, the court said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits and could suffer irreparable harm without intervention. The judge noted that there are only about 16 male-to-female transgender women housed in female facilities and wrote that the government had “not so much as alleged that the plaintiffs in this particular suit present any threat to the female inmates housed with them, or that this threat cannot be managed locally by prison staff.”
The court said the balance of equities and public interest favored the plaintiffs, finding little justification for halting hormone therapy other than “whatever small sum of money” the Federal Bureau of Prisons might save.
The Trump administration appealed the injunction, and the case is pending.
In another case, a federal district judge granted a preliminary injunction in June 2025 that blocked Trump’s attempt to stop the Federal Bureau of Prisons from providing “gender-affirming care” to transgender prisoners.
The governors of California and Maine did not respond to requests for comment.
