(LifeSiteNews) — A district court judge issued a first-of-its-kind ruling last week when he banned a Texas-based prison from allowing male inmates who identify as women from entering “any female-only privacy area,” such as showers, bathrooms, and dormitories.
Judge Sidney Fitzwater of the Northern District of Texas sided with Rhonda Fleming and Miriam Crystal Herrera in his ruling. The women are inmates at the all-female Federal Medical Center-Carswell in Fort Worth, which houses female inmates with special mental and other health needs. The two had filed a lawsuit challenging the policy, with Fleming previously stating that it made her feel “humiliated and degraded every day so that men that identify as women can be comfortable.”
Fitzwater issued a temporary restraining order on November 17 directing FMS Carswell to forbid “any male inmate within the general female population in any housing unit where either [female] plaintiff is currently or will be housed.”
To comply with the order, FMS Carswell will need to segregate male inmates who identify as women from the female population.
Fleming and Herrera previously complained that several female-identifying male inmates were harassing and even physically abusing female prisoners. “This case is about protecting women’s rights to safety, dignity, and bodily privacy,” they said.
As reported by LifeSite, placing gender-confused men in women’s prisons has often resulted in physical harm for female prisoners. In August, a female inmate was “brutally assaulted” in a Washington prison by a transgender-identifying male pedophile. The man was accused of sexually assaulting another female inmate in 2024.
Other prison systems routinely put their female inmates at risk. In California in 2023, male triple murderer David “Dana Rivers” Wakefield began serving his life sentence in a women’s prison. California has allowed males to be housed with female inmates since 2021.
However, this past June, Quebec’s Public Security Minister François Bonnardel announced that gender-confused inmates would be sent to incarceration facilities based on their sex, not the gender they “identify” with. Bonnardel said that the measure was necessary because “safety must always come first, for the benefit of correctional officers, our fellow citizens and incarcerated people.”
In September, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott approved legislation directing the state’s Criminal Justice Department to “ensure inmates are housed in a correctional facility” according to their sex while also prohibiting family violence shelters from offering services to gender-confused males unless they are 17 years old or younger and the child of a woman being served.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to prevent males from being housed with female prisoners and to deny federal funds for the use of inmate “transitions.” In June, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the executive order on behalf of gender-confused inmates, some of whom have been allowed to stay in the prison of their choice while the courts decide the matter.
National Public Radio reports that, as of February 2025, the Bureau of Prisons has 2,198 “transgender” inmates within the federal prison system. Of those people, 22 “trans women” – confused men – are reportedly being housed in female facilities, while one “trans male” – a woman who claims to be a man – is living at a men’s facility.
