Transgender inmates who are trying to prevent their imminent transfers to an all-male housing unit have moved to keep “sensitive” information about themselves concealed after female prisoners from a separate but related case identified the biological males imprisoned alongside them as convicted sex offenders.The male litigants in Jane Doe v. Blanche, all of whom are biological males currently housed at various women’s prisons across the country, filed a request on Friday asking that the court keep in place a protective order that seals certain judicial records containing identifiable information from public view.In Jane Doe, the plaintiffs were permitted to sue the Trump administration using female pseudonyms, and all information that could identify the plaintiffs to the public has accordingly been redacted in court documents. The personal identifiers strictly prohibited from public disclosure include names, biographical details, the women’s facilities housing the biologically male plaintiffs, and their criminal history.
Four female inmates from a Texas lawsuit, Fleming v. Warden T. Rule, who are looking to join the Jane Doe case as defendants, filed a motion to intervene on June 5 but were forced to redact portions of their accompanying exhibits alleging that multiple biologically male inmates were preying upon the women inside Federal Medical Center-Carswell, a specialized women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas. A government notice confirmed that four of the anonymous Jane Doe plaintiffs reside at FMC Carswell.In response, the biologically male plaintiffs who are part of the Jane Doe suit sought and subsequently obtained immediate emergency relief from the court, preventing the public disclosure of “sensitive identifying information that would materially increase the risk of certain Plaintiffs being identified and targeted within the correctional system and invade their privacy.”DOJ’S CREATIVE SOLUTION TO TRANSGENDER PRISON CASE WOULD MOVE MALE INMATES INTO SPECIALIZED UNITThe Fleming intervenors have since asked that the court reconsider the June 18 sealing order heavily redacting their witness statements. In a reconsideration motion, the Fleming plaintiffs asserted on procedural grounds that they were deprived of an opportunity to be heard by the court before those redactions were granted.Meanwhile, the Jane Doe plaintiffs want U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, the Ronald Reagan nominee presiding over the case, to deny the Fleming intervenors’ procedural challenge to his June ruling, claiming that the women had “no greater right to be heard … than any member of the general public” as non-official parties to the litigation.In their 12-page filing from Friday, the biological males complained that the women’s initial motion to intervene left all identifying information about some of the plaintiffs unredacted “with no regard for the pseudonym and protective orders entered in these consolidated actions.”“Even if those Plaintiffs’ names were redacted from those materials, any reader could easily compare the documents filed in Movants’ case side-by-side with the Motion to Intervene and readily determine the identity and personal and confidential information about one or more Plaintiffs,” reads the opposition filing, jointly submitted by the National Center for LGBTQ Rights and the LGBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders on behalf of their transgender clients.The biological males argued that the public can then technically combine information that the Fleming plaintiffs disclosed in the attached exhibits with the supporting declarations filed in their own case, though a separate proceeding in a different district court, and the “resulting mosaic of information” would reveal “private and confidential information about them.”Allegations of sexual misconduct
