Coffee Creek Correctional Facility
PASADENA, Calif. – A federal appeals court has found an Oregon judge erred when ordering more than 100 inmates who came out as transgender women to a female-only prison.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued its ruling Sept. 17 in favor of Oregon officials who fought the transfer but hit a roadblock before magistrate judge Mark Clarke, who imposed a class-wide injunction. He found Oregon had a “default presumption” that transgender inmates be assigned to men’s prison, and that presumption exposed them to a substantial risk of harm.
Not so, the Ninth Circuit ruled in an opinion written by Judge Eric Tung. The State already has a process for deciding where to place inmates who come out as transgender while in custody – an individualized review process.
“Even assuming the existence of a default presumption, however, the district court’s mandatory injunction would still be unjustified,” Tung added.
“The record here does not support the conclusion that any presumption reflected Defendants’ deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of harm to Plaintiffs and other class members – a prerequisite to establishing an Eight Amendment violation.”
State records show there are currently 117 transgender women in prison facilities and 26 of them have requested to be moved to the state’s only female prison – Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.
There are eight transgender women at Coffee Creek. The plaintiff who brought suit went to prison in 2008 and in 2015 identified as a transgender woman, but her transfer was rejected over safety concerns. She was convicted of a sex offense against a disabled female.
Her victim had physical limitations, was unable to communicate and had to have surgery to remove an 11-inch “plastic object” the plaintiff lodged in her abdomen. Another rejection came in the review of a transgender woman who had sexually abused her young niece and assaulted her girlfriend.
One transgender inmate was sent to Coffee Creek but months later had to be returned to a men’s prison for calling the female inmates derogatory names and grabbing her male genitals when walking by others.
She also requested to return to the men’s prison. Two years and a vulvoplasty later, she returned to Coffee Creek.
All of this showed the State weighed individual factors when assessing transfers and did not operate with a default presumption that male-born inmates must stay in men’s facilities, the Ninth Circuit held.
“The district court assumed that, if the process were truly individualized, it would not have produced an outcome that was, in the court’s view, this lopsided,” Tung wrote.
“But no evidence supports the district court’s speculation about how many transgender inmates ‘should’ have ended up in women’s prisons under an individualized review. Indeed, the record refutes it.”
