July 4th, 2025 by WCBC Radio

Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today joined a coalition of 13 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in Jones v. Bondi in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, urging the court to protect the health and safety of incarcerated transgender people. The attorneys general ask the Court to uphold the lower court’s preliminary injunction blocking the Trump Administration from implementing a policy that would remove all discretion of correctional staff to house transgender women in women’s prisons.

In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which adopted a zero-tolerance standard for sexual violence that occur in U.S. prisons and ordered that the prevention of prison rape be made a top priority through the development and implementation of national standards for detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment. In filing this brief, the coalition is fighting to ensure that the rights of transgender individuals remain protected.

In an abrupt reversal of its longstanding policy and practice, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) issued a decision to remove all discretion of correctional staff to house any transgender woman in a BOP women’s facility. Jane Jones, a transgender woman, subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration over its unlawful policy and was granted a preliminary injunction blocking the policy as her case proceeds. The Trump Administration appealed the lower court’s injunction.

The attorneys general argue that PREA’s protections are essential to the safety and security of transgender individuals and the prison population as a whole, and that BOP’s blanket policy would harm incarcerated people. In their brief, they ask the court to uphold the lower court’s preliminary injunction. In submitting this brief, Attorney General Brown joins the attorneys general of California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawai‛i, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont.