Editor's note: This piece was co-authored by Riley Gaines and Jack Casali.
“Kamala is for they/them.”
That line, part of an ad by President Trump’s campaign during the 2024 campaign, was viral in its reach and brutally effective in framing and freezing his opponent—particularly among suburban women. But the story behind the soundbite is a real, and still active, legal and policy battle.
Trump’s message called out Vice President Kamala Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming care for violent, trans-identifying male prisoners. In fact, Harris claimed she, “Made sure they changed the policy in the state of California, so every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and needed.”
It was too much for voters, who went on to deliver a clear message: Return to common sense.
In the first weeks of his second term, President Trump issued executive orders ending the ideology voters rejected. Among them, Executive Order 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” targets the ex-VP’s unpopular stance: No longer will there be taxpayer-funded, gender-affirming care in prisons, and prisoners would reside at facilities based on their biological sex.
That wasn’t the end of it.
In mid-February, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a temporary restraining order halting the executive action. In his decision, Judge Lambert found inmates were likely to prevail on their Eighth Amendment claim of Cruel and Unusual Punishment because they faced an “objectively intolerable risk of harm.” What constitutes an objectively intolerable risk of harm? A Judge must weigh the punishment against society’s evolving standards of decency: According to Judge Lambert, the “uncomfortable dissonance” a trans-identifying prisoner may feel living with members of their biological sex is simply beyond the pale.
Judge Lambert also found that trans-identifying inmates would be subjected to a “significantly elevated risk of physical and sexual violence” if housed with biological men. For those checking: Women inmates making the same argument have for years been regularly ignored when forced to live with men.
None of this is new. More than 200 years ago, Quaker reformer Elizabeth Fry, referred to as “angel of the prisons,” earned her place in history (and beside Queen Elizabeth II on the £5 note) for her trailblazing advocacy in prison reform that included sex segregation of prisons and female wardens for female inmates across the whole British empire. Fifty years later, the first women’s prison was established in the United States by Rhoda Coffin, who was similarly moved by the appalling conditions she saw at a co-ed Indiana state penitentiary. Like Fry, Coffin was inspired to rescue women from sexual abuses occurring at these facilities and believed that women were “best equipped to understand the needs of female inmates.”
The re-introduction of men into women’s prisons undermines more than two centuries of progress. Indeed, Fry and Coffin’s wisdom that women-operated facilities are best equipped to respond to the needs of women inmates is lost when those facilities must accommodate trans-identifying males.
Inmates have no escape from the conditions imposed upon them—they are protected only by society’s perceptions of decency, which women of the past worked hard to shape. By signing Executive Order 14168, President Trump re-established what Fry, Coffin, and countless other women have advocated for more than two hundred years: A safe place for women ensuring their dignity, safety, and well-being in the prison system.
In 2024, voters rejected prioritizing trans-identifying inmates over common sense. Judge Lampert is absolutely correct that societal standards evolve. But he’s wrong on the direction, as more than 77 million voters indicated in November.
“Riley Gaines is vice chair of the America First Athletes Coalition and host of Outkicks "Gaines for Girls Podcast." Jessica Hart Steinmann is executive general counsel & vice chair of litigation at America First Policy Institute. Jack Casali is an associate attorney at America First Policy Institute.
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