A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order compelling officials with the Bureau of Prisons to stop providing gender-affirming hormone therapy and accommodations to transgender people.

News of the order by Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a Republican appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, was reported in a press release by the ACLU, which is representing plaintiffs in the litigation alongside the Transgender Law Center.

Pursuant to issuance of the executive order on Jan. 20, the the BOP announced that that “no Bureau of Prisons funds are to be expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex,” while also prohibiting clothing and commissary items the agency considers incongruous with a person’s birth sex, and requiring all BOP staff to misgender transgender people.

Two transgender men and one transgender woman, each diagnosed with gender dysphoria by prison officials and prescribed hormone therapy, were either informed that their treatment would soon be suspended or were cut off from their treatment. On behalf of America’s 2,000 or so transgender inmates, they filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration and BOP in March.

The ACLU noted that while Lamberth’s order did not address surgeries, it did grant the plaintiff’s motion for a class certification and extended injunctive relief to the full class, which encompasses all persons who are or will be incarcerated in BOP facilities and have a current medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who receive that diagnosis in the future,” per the press release.

“Today’s ruling is made possible by the courageous plaintiffs who fought to protect their rights and the rights of transgender people everywhere,” said Shawn Thomas Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center. “This administration’s continued targeting of transgender people is cruel and threatens the lives of all people. No person—incarcerated or not, transgender or not—should have their rights to medically necessary care denied. We are grateful the court understood that our clients deserve basic dignity and healthcare, and we will continue to fight alongside them.”

“Today’s ruling is an important lifeline for trans people in federal custody,” said Michael Perloff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of D.C. “The ruling is also a critical reminder to the Trump administration that trans people, like all people, have constitutional rights that don’t simply disappear because the president has decided to wage an ideological battle.”

An immigration judge on Tuesday dismissed the asylum case of a gay makeup artist from Venezuela who the U.S. “forcibly removed” to El Salvador.

The Immigrant Defenders Law Center represents Andry Hernández Romero.

The Los Angeles-based organization in a press release notes Immigration Judge Paula Dixon in San Diego granted the Department of Homeland Security’s motion to dismiss Hernández’s case. A hearing had been scheduled to take place on Wednesday.

Hernández asked for asylum because of persecution he said he suffered in Venezuela because of his sexual orientation and political beliefs. NBC News reported Hernández pursued his case while at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.

The Trump-Vance administration in March “forcibly removed” Hernández and other Venezuelans from the U.S. and sent them to El Salvador.

The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”

President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” Hernández is one of the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit that seeks to force the U.S. to return those sent to El Salvador under the 18th century law.

The Immigrant Defenders Law Center says officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection claimed Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member because of his tattoos. Hernández and hundreds of other Venezuelans who the Trump-Vance administration “forcibly removed” from the U.S. remain at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this month told gay U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that Hernández “is in El Salvador” and questions about his well-being “would be best made to the president and to the government of El Salvador.” Garcia, along with U.S. Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.), Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.), and Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), were unable to meet with Hernández last month when they traveled to the Central American country.

“DHS is doing everything it can to erase the fact that Andry came to the United States seeking asylum and he was denied due process as required by our Constitution,” said Immigrant Defenders Law Center President Lindsay Toczylowski on Thursday in the press release her organization released. “We should all be incredibly alarmed at what has happened in Andry’s case. The idea that the government can disappear you because of your tattoos, and never even give you a day in court, should send a chill down the spine of every American. If this can happen to Andry, it can happen to any one of us.”

Toczylowski said the Immigrant Defenders Law Center will appeal Dixon’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the Justice Department oversees.

The Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the Human Rights Campaign, and other groups on June 6 plan to hold a rally for Hernández outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Protesters in Venezuela have also called for his release.

“Having tattoos does not make you a delinquent,” reads one of the banners that protesters held.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.

While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.

The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.

Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.