“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
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What’s at stake in this case?
A transgender federal prisoner challenged a Trump executive order prohibiting the provision of gender affirming care.
What happened in this case?
Following a January 20, 2025 executive order from Trump, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) stopped providing gender-affirming care to transgender prisoners. A federal lawsuit was brought, and Reagan judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction calling for the provision of such gender affirming care while the case continued. The Trump Administration appealed to the DC Circuit.
In June 2026, Trump judge Justin Walker and George HW Bush judge Karen LeCraft Henderson issued an order that stayed Judge Lambeth’s ruling as the case goes forward in Kingdom v Trump. Obama judge Cornelia Pillard strongly dissented. In their brief unsigned opinion, Walker and Henderson maintained that stopping the new Trump policy change would cause the government “irreparable injury” and that the district court had improperly issue an administrative stay without demonstrating that its action was justified by the ordinary factors considered by courts in deciding on a preliminary injunction.
Why did Judge Pillard dissent?
Judge Pillard explained that the majority’s “irreparable injury” claim was wrong because it really did no more than assert that the preservation of the status quo and delay in implementation of the new Trump policy would irreparably harm the Trump administration, without any specific showing of the harm caused, a “broad and seemingly novel proposition” that the court had previously rejected in other cases. The “administrative stay” claim, she pointed out, at most suggests the government is likely to succeed on appeal and offers “no reason to short-circuit” the appellate process “with an emergency stay.”
Why is the ruling harmful?
The ruling made possible by Trump judge Walker clearly harms the transgender prisoners who had received appropriate care thanks to Judge Lamberth’s order. Further, it sets a bad precedent in the DC Circuit for reviewing damaging Trump orders. It also illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.