Lawsuit accuses Trump DOJ of stripping anti-rape protections from trans prisonershttps://www.advocate.com/politics/national/transgender-prisoner-rape-lawsuit 🔗Christopher Wiggins (7 May 2026)
The Trump administration is facing a new federal lawsuit accusing the Justice Department of illegally dismantling protections meant to shield transgender incarcerated people from sexual abuse.
Filed on Wednesday in federal court in Washington, D.C., the lawsuit challenges a December 2025 Justice Department memorandum directing prisons and federal auditors to disregard portions of the Prison Rape Elimination Act, or PREA, regulations that specifically protect transgender people behind bars.
The suit, Poe v. U.S. Department of Justice, was brought by the National Center for LGBTQ Rights on behalf of Paulina Poe, a transgender woman incarcerated in a men's prison.
The plaintiffs accuse the Trump administration of attempting to erase federal recognition of transgender incarcerated people by informally suspending longstanding prison safety regulations without legally repealing them. According to the complaint, the Justice Department instructed prisons to ignore federal protections requiring individualized safety assessments for transgender people and ordered PREA auditors to stop evaluating whether prisons comply with those standards.
At the center of the case is PREA, the bipartisan anti-prison-rape law Congress passed unanimously in 2003 after years of reports documenting widespread sexual violence in American correctional facilities. The law directed the Justice Department to create national standards aimed at preventing rape and abuse behind bars.
