The Justice Department initiated an investigation this week into California’s mixed-sex prison housing policy, which places biological men in women’s correctional facilities, after a federal judge struck down a legal challenge to the state’s transgender placement practices.
DOJ officials notified Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) on Thursday of the federal investigation that will determine whether California’s Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, a law allowing male prisoners, including fully intact sex offenders, to be housed with women based on self-asserted gender identity, violates the constitutional rights of female inmates.
“The Trump Administration will not stand by if governors are facilitating the abuse of biological women under the guise of inclusion,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a press statement announcing the investigation.
“Our Constitution protects women from having their civil rights violated by harmful state legislation wrapped in the language of ‘equity’ and ‘progress,’” added First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, of the Central District of California.
The case, investigating if the California law unconstitutionally gives preferential treatment to transgender-identifying inmates over the safety of incarcerated women, centers on claims from female prisoners alleging that they have been deprived of equal protection and constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.
Under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, the DOJ has the authority to investigate such suspected civil rights violations. Past findings have resulted in settlement agreements that spur reforms within correctional systems.
Allegations of mistreatment
According to the DOJ, the investigation follows widespread reports of rape, sexual assault, and voyeurism at the California correctional facilities where women are forced to share intimate spaces, such as sleeping quarters and communal showers, with male inmates who identify as transgender.
Federal investigators will look, in particular, at the California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County and the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County.
In addition to the California case, the DOJ will also investigate whether Maine similarly engages in a pattern or practice of violating the constitutional rights of women incarcerated at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham.
Senate Bill 132, signed by Newsom in 2020, authorized California inmates to be admitted into state facilities of the opposite sex, regardless of biological reality.
Since the bill was signed into law as the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, more than 1,020 male inmates have requested transfers to female-designated facilities, according to data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Feminist opponents of the law sued the state in 2021 on constitutional grounds, arguing that it created a dangerous environment for women confined in the most vulnerable of settings by subjecting them to substantial risk of sexual violence and severe psychological distress.
Judge Jennifer L. Thurston, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, issued a dismissal on Monday in the case, Chandler v. Macomb, brought by the Women’s Liberation Front on behalf of six incarcerated women.
“There is no doubt that these alleged injuries are concrete and personal, even wrenching,” Thurston acknowledged.
However, she ruled that the plaintiffs cannot directly link past harms to the state statute because California let some biological men into women’s prisons before the law was enacted. “For this reason, their complaint does not establish the necessary chain of cause and effect between past injuries and the law they challenge,” Thurston wrote.
As for claims of future harm, Thurston said those are speculative. “Injuries and harm in the past do not alone give the plaintiffs standing to pursue an injunction,” she said of redressing future injury.
WoLF plans on appealing the decision in Chandler, its second complaint to be dismissed.
“We are very distressed about this at WoLF as we know the conditions the women there are undergoing and are very concerned for their physical and mental health,” Elspeth Cypher, the president of WoLF, told the Washington Examiner. “We are not stopping our advocacy and are considering our legal options.”
Cypher said that the women in California prisons have, for years, endured exhibitionism, sexual harassment, attempted rape, and rape at the hands of men housed alongside them.
Sometimes they sleep in shifts to protect each other, Cypher said, especially when a woman is assigned a male cellmate. The sleep schedules among the women ensure that someone is always on watch.
Cypher applauded the DOJ investigations into California’s and Maine’s mixed-sex housing assignments, which came days after the dismissal in Chandler.
“We are very glad that the Department of Justice has noticed and paid attention to the women in prison in California and Maine,” Cypher said. “It is encouraging to see women’s rights to safety, dignity, and privacy being recognized.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, chief of the DOJ’s civil rights division, said the probes are part of a new project called the Single-Sex Prison Initiative. The department is currently collecting information on the housing of men in women’s jails and prisons across the country.
Cypher, expressing concerns about the women’s ability to speak freely without the fear of relation, said that oftentimes when women complain about men infiltrating female-only facilities, they face repercussions.
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“We hope that they’re not impeded in their investigation in any way,” she said, “and that they are able to talk to the women who are suffering daily, housed in small contained spaces with violent men.”
“I am impressed by the strength of these women every day,” Cypher continued. “What they have been enduring is considered torture under international law, and it should not be allowed in the United States.”