Longtime local transgender advocates Earline Budd and Jeri Hughes, who have served for more than a decade on the D.C. Department of Corrections’ Transgender Housing and Transgender Advisory committees, say they have witnessed first-hand what they believe to be the D.C. Jail’s role in leading the nation in its policies in support of transgender inmates.

The two said that around 2009 the D.C. Jail became one of the nation’s first correctional facilities to adopt a policy allowing transgender inmates to choose whether to be placed in the men’s or the women’s housing units.

In a claim that will likely come as a surprise to LGBTQ activists, Budd and Hughes said more than 95 percent of female transgender inmates at the D.C. Jail chose to be placed in the men’s section of the jail.

Budd and Hughes said they were motivated to speak out about DOC’s trans policies following a class action lawsuit filed last year against the city by the ACLU of D.C. and the D.C. Public Defender Service on behalf of a female transgender inmate at the D.C. Jail.

The lawsuit charged that officials at the Department of Corrections and the jail violated the gender identity provision of the city’s Human Rights Act and the constitutional rights of equal protection for trans inmate Sunday Hinton by placing her in the men’s housing unit at the jail against her wishes in May 2021.

Hinton and five other former female trans inmates at the jail submitted sworn affidavits as part of the lawsuit claiming that their requests to be housed in the women’s section of the jail were either denied or jail officials coerced them into agreeing to be placed in the men’s section. The affidavits say the alleged improper action by jail officials against the six trans women took place between 2019 and 2021.

Hinton has since been released from the jail after a burglary related charge brought against her was dropped.

The Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents the city in lawsuits, and Hinton reached a settlement agreement last month to end the lawsuit. The DOC agreed in the settlement, among other things, to put in place policies that ensure that trans inmates can choose the section of the jail in which they are to be housed.

The agreement keeps in place existing DOC policies calling for the Transgender Housing Committee to review all trans housing requests and to make a recommendation on the request, with jail security officials making the final decision on where to place the trans inmate.

Hughes told the Washington Blade that for the past decade or longer DOC and jail officials have followed the recommendations of the Transgender Housing Committee, whose members include representatives of the trans community.

She points out that the objective of the committee is to confirm that a trans female inmate requesting housing in the women’s section of the jail is truly a transgender person and not a male inmate claiming to be trans with the possible motive of sexually assaulting or otherwise endangering cisgender female inmates.

According to Budd and Hughes, at the request of LGBTQ rights advocates, the DOC adopted a policy in 2009 that allowed transgender inmates to choose whether to be placed in the men’s or women’s section of the jail. They said the policy, which created the DOC’s Transgender Housing Committee as well as a Transgender Advisory Committee, called for the housing committee to review the inmates’ housing requests to assess the safety of the trans inmates and all other inmates.

“You cannot just say I’m transgender and go in the women’s jail,” Hughes said. “You’ve got to have an evaluation. You have to be determined – OK, you’re legit. You live as a woman. You’re transgender,” Hughes told the Blade.

Hughes and Budd said the allegations raised in the Sunday Hinton lawsuit, if true, appear to be a breach in the DOC and the D.C. Jail’s longstanding policy of allowing trans inmates to choose whether to be placed in the men’s or women’s section of the jail. Budd said restrictions put in place at the jail in response to the COVID pandemic resulted in the suspension of all meetings of the Transgender Housing Committee.

But she said it was her understanding that an official at the jail who is a member of the Transgender Housing Committee has been meeting individually with trans inmates to determine their preference for a housing assignment. Budd said the official, who she identified as Tracy Outlaw, was also helping transgender inmates obtain things they needed, such as women’s undergarments like bras and hormone treatments.

“What I can say is the jail does not and has not been mistreating transgender inmates coming in the jail, and that they get the utmost respect in terms of the population,” Budd said.

When asked to explain their claim that nearly all female trans inmates choose to be placed in the men’s section of the jail, Budd and Hughes said that the female trans inmates are treated with greater respect by fellow male inmates than by female inmates.

“In the male section of the jail, they have a certain status,” Hughes said. “They are desirable. In the female section, they are not desirable. So, there is no advantage for them to be there,” according to Hughes. “And nearly every [trans] girl that has ever asked to go to the female section is in there for about a week and asks to get back right away” to the male section, Hughes said.

Department of Corrections spokesperson Keena Blackmon provided the Blade with an update on the DOC’s transgender policies following the settlement of the lawsuit, but she did not respond to the Blade’s request for confirmation of Budd and Hughes’ assertion that nearly all transgender female inmates request to be housed in the men’s section of the D.C. Jail.

“While the DC Department of Corrections (DOC) does not comment on the specifics of litigation-related matters, DOC is committed to ensuring a safe, secure and inclusive environment for all our residents, including our transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming residents,” Blackmon said in an email. “DOC formed the Transgender Advisory Committee (TAC), which serves as a liaison for the DOC and the transgender community and also internally established the Transgender Housing Committee (THC),” she said.

“The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a host of operational changes to ensure the health and wellbeing of all DOC residents and staff and affected the ability of the THC to operate in its normal capacity,” Blackmon said. “As we have navigated the challenges of the pandemic, we have continued to adopt both our policies and practices to ensure we meet our above stated commitment while addressing the public health needs of all in our DOC facilities and will continue to do so,” she said.

Scott Michelman, legal director of the ACLU of D.C. who served as the lead attorney representing Sunday Hinton in her lawsuit against the DOC, said the actions by officials at the D.C. Jail toward Hinton and the five trans female inmates who joined her in the class action lawsuit raised serious doubts about any claims that the DOC had in place trans supportive policies – at least during the years of 2019 through early 2021.

Michelman points out that Tracy Outlaw, one of the DOC officials serving on the Transgender Housing Committee that Budd said has been supportive of trans inmates, is accused in one of the sworn affidavits submitted by a trans inmate who was part of the Hinton lawsuit of refusing to help the inmate be placed in the women’s section of the jail. Michelman said another DOC official “coerced” Hinton into signing a form waiving her rights to be placed in the women’s section of the jail.

“These actions, among others, undermine the claim that DOC was doing right by trans folks as of 2021,” Michelman said. “If DOC wants to protect trans women, it can start by complying with the settlement terms reached in Sunday Hinton’s case,” he said.

Budd said that while any DOC staff member should be held accountable for violating the DOC’s transgender policies, she strongly disputes claims that Tracy Outlaw coerced a trans inmate into being housed in the men’s section of the jail.

“What I am not going to do is go back and forth about this case,” Budd told the Blade. “The fact is that the ACLU and the attorneys are only seeking one side of this story,” which she said was that of the trans inmates who were part of the Hinton lawsuit.

“It is not fair that these allegations are coming up and we are not able to share our side of the story, which is totally different,” she said. “I have been and continue to be a transgender advocate and will support even those who have sought to demean me.”  

Critics of the DOC have pointed out that many of the problems faced by the D.C. Jail surfaced under the tenure of former DOC Director, Quincy Booth, who held the director’s position from 2016 to January of this year, when Mayor Muriel Bowser replaced him with former DOC Director Tom Faust. Faust served as director from 2011 to 2016 during the years that Budd and Hughes have said DOC put in place or strengthened its trans supportive policies.  

Bowser’s decision to replace Booth came shortly after the Federal Bureau of Prisons transferred 400 inmates at the D.C. Jail to a federal prison in Pennsylvania after announcing an inspection of the jail by U.S. Marshals found “evidence of systematic failures” and unacceptable living conditions at the jail.

Budd said that shortly after Faust began as acting DOC Director, he invited her to meet with him to discuss trans issues at the jail.