The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to restore restrictions on transgender health care for federal prison inmates on Wednesday.
President Trump’s team had asked the high court to stay a lower court ruling that blocked the policy from taking effect while legal challenges continue, but the justices turned down the request without comment. Republican-appointed Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both indicated they would have granted the administration’s request for a stay.
The administration’s emergency petition marked another front in its broader push to limit access to gender-affirming medical care. Federal courts have become battlegrounds over multiple executive actions targeting transgender health services since Trump returned to the White House in January of last year.
The lower court’s ruling against the prison policy remains in place for now, allowing continued access to hormone therapy and other treatments for transgender inmates while the underlying case proceeds through the courts. The Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene at this stage does not represent a final ruling on the merits of the policy itself.
Trump has secured favorable outcomes on the majority of his emergency applications to the Supreme Court since the start of his second term, making this denial a notable departure from that pattern. The justices have previously granted stays in other high-profile cases involving his administration’s priorities.
The court’s standard practice is to issue no explanation for decisions on the emergency motions docket, a protocol designed to avoid prejudging issues that could return for full briefing and oral argument later. Wednesday’s one-line order followed that convention.
The policy at issue would have restricted transgender treatment options available to inmates in the federal Bureau of Prisons system, which houses approximately 150,000 people across its facilities nationwide. Litigation over the restrictions is expected to continue in lower federal courts.
The case joins a growing docket of legal challenges to the administration’s executive actions on transgender health care, including separate litigation over restrictions on medical treatment for transgender youth that federal judges have also blocked.