In a new filing, the Justice Department argued that the constitutional requirement to provide medical treatment can be fully satisfied by aggressively medicating the depression caused by withholding it.
The Justice Department formally petitioned the Supreme Court on Tuesday to let the federal Bureau of Prisons deny hormone therapy to transgender inmates, arguing in court documents that prescribing an unrelated suite of mood stabilizers perfectly satisfies the government's Eighth Amendment obligations.
The filing, which seeks to overturn a series of lower court injunctions, outlines a new legal framework under which President Donald Trump's administration would categorize psychiatric suppression as a direct medical equivalent to gender-affirming care, noting in a supplemental declaration that the Bureau will generously offer inmates access to psychotherapy to help them cope with the government's decision to abruptly halt their medical treatment.
Our position is straightforward: if an inmate is sufficiently sedated by generic SSRIs, their underlying gender dysphoria is no longer a logistical burden for the facility.
Under the proposed policy rollback, the Bureau of Prisons would immediately transition inmates off their current regimens of estrogen or testosterone and enroll them in mandatory counseling, a process designed to help prisoners peacefully accept the medical determinations of federal litigators. Records cited in the brief indicate the Bureau has already allocated $4.2 million for citalopram to manage the anticipated wave of court-ordered despondency.
The administration's petition concludes by urging the justices to grant emergency relief before the end of the term, warning that without immediate intervention, the federal government may be forced to continue providing standard medical care.