The federal Department of Justice announced an investigation into California’s correctional system Thursday over the state’s policy of housing incarcerated transgender women in female prisons.
The Trump administration said it plans to investigate two facilities in the state, the California Institution for Women in San Bernardino County and the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County, for potentially violating the rights of women incarcerated in those prisons.
“Our Constitution protects woman (sic) from having their civil rights violated by harmful state legislation wrapped in the language of ‘equity’ and ‘progress,’ ” First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli said in a statement announcing the investigation.
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesperson Terri Hardy said state prisons enforce a zero-tolerance policy of sexual assault in the department’s facilities, which is in alignment with the federal law known as the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
“CDCR is committed to providing a safe, humane, respectful and rehabilitative environment for all incarcerated people,” Hardy said in a statement. “Any suggestion that all transgender women be assigned to men’s institutions as a matter of policy is a suggestion to violate federal law.”
In 2020, the Legislature passed the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, which enables transgender, nonbinary and intersex people entering the correctional system to self-identify their gender. These responses determine where CDCR houses them.
The Justice Department announced that it also would investigate a prison in Maine over the same issue.
According to CDCR’s latest population report there are 84,712 men, 4,101 women and 990 non-binary people incarcerated in California prisons. The population reports do not indicate how many of those individuals identify as transgender.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in the announcement that the investigations would focus on whether the practice of housing transgender women in women’s prisons violated the constitutional rights of the other incarcerated individuals.
The Justice Department said it was investigating possible violations of incarcerated individuals’ protection from cruel and unusual punishment and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
Federal officials said that as a result of the states’ approach to housing transgender inmates in women’s prisons, there have been allegations of “sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive climate of sexual intimidation.”