In one of this administration’s predictably awful weekend news dumps, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons released its revised Transgender Offender Manual on Friday. The Bureau’s new policies will roll back Obama-era protections that allowed transgender inmates to be housed and use bathroom facilities according to their gender identities. Now, these determinations will largely be made based on biological sex. According to NPR:

The guidelines now say that the Transgender Executive Council "will use biological sex as the initial determination" for facility assignment for transgender inmates, and a transgender inmate would be assigned to a facility based on their identified gender only "in rare cases." To make a determination about placement, the Council can consider the inmate's health and safety, the inmate's history of behavior and the security of the institution and its inmates.



According to the revisions, an inmate may also be assigned to a facility based on their self-identified gender if "there has been significant progress towards transition as demonstrated by medical and mental health history." Prison wardens are permitted to recommend transferring an inmate based on their identified gender as well.

Transgender inmates are among the most vulnerable members of the prison population—a 2012 study found that a third of trans inmates have been sexually assaulted while imprisoned.

President Trump’s latest attack on trans rights follows his long-running efforts to ban transgender people from enlisting in the military.



Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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