The US Supreme Court on Wednesday denied the administration’s request for a stay. The Federal Bureau of Prisons must, for now, keep providing gender-affirming care in federal prisons. A short order, with no reasons. Not a ruling on the merits. Dump NPR.

The emergency file at the Court: Trump v. Kingdom, 26A416. The merits case, after the ACLU: Kingdom v. Trump. Two captions. Judge Royce Lamberth, in the District of Columbia, blocked the BOP policy. SCOTUSblog: the most recent order, 26 August. The ACLU: an injunction dated 17 June. Two clocks on the date. The injunction stands.

Thomas and Alito would have granted the request, also without explanation. The rest of the Court denied it. SCOTUSblog records 7–2 on the case page. The denial does not say whether the policy is lawful.

The February 2026 BOP policy would cut, among other things, hormone therapy and “social accommodations”. The BOP says it adopted the policy independently of the January 2025 executive order. That is the bureau’s position, not a finding. The D.C. Circuit had already refused, in a divided panel, to freeze Lamberth’s order.

The text of the order, after NPR: the application for stay presented to the Chief Justice and referred to the Court is denied. One sentence. It does not say who is right on the merits. The lawsuit continues.

The ACLU, through Li Nowlin-Sohl: more than 2,000 people in BOP custody identify as transgender; the class would cover about 1,000 with a gender-dysphoria diagnosis, of whom about 800 have been prescribed hormone therapy. The organisation’s estimates, not figures from Wednesday’s order. Dump NPR. The rewrite rests on NPR and SCOTUSblog.

Image: the US Supreme Court building, Washington, 29 May 2019, TgsVenom, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The façade, not Wednesday’s conference.

Sources consulted: Justices leave lower court order in place preventing Trump administration from implementing transgender inmate policy — SCOTUSblog.