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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today joined a
coalition of 13 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in Jones v. Bondi in the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia, urging the court to protect the health and safety of
incarcerated transgender people. The attorneys general ask the Court to uphold the lower court’s
preliminary injunction blocking the Trump Administration from implementing a policy that
would remove all discretion of correctional staff to house transgender women in women’s
prisons.
“Transgender people behind bars face a heightened risk of violence and abuse, and it’s our duty
to ensure they are protected,” said Attorney General Brown. “This policy needlessly puts lives
at risk by forcing prisons to ignore individual circumstances. Correctional staff must be allowed
to use their judgment to keep people safe. Anything less is dangerous and inhumane.”
In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which adopted a zerotolerance standard for sexual violence that occur in U.S. prisons and ordered that the prevention
of prison rape be made a top priority through the development and implementation of national
standards for detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment.
In filing this brief, the coalition is fighting to ensure that the rights of transgender individuals
remain protected.
In an abrupt reversal of its longstanding policy and practice, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
issued a decision to remove all discretion of correctional staff to house any transgender woman
in a BOP women’s facility. Jane Jones, a transgender woman, subsequently filed a lawsuit
against the Trump Administration over its unlawful policy and was granted a preliminary
injunction blocking the policy as her case proceeds. The Trump Administration appealed the
lower court’s injunction.
The attorneys general argue that PREA’s protections are essential to the safety and security of
transgender individuals and the prison population as a whole, and that BOP’s blanket policy
would harm incarcerated people. In their brief, they ask the court to uphold the lower court’s
preliminary injunction.
In submitting this brief, Attorney General Brown joins the attorneys general of California,
Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawai‛i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York,
Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
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