A federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan has accused the Trump administration of violating his court order regarding the treatment of transgender women in Bureau of Prisons custody, suggesting the government's actions amounted to insubordination — a notable rebuke from a jurist long regarded as a law-and-order conservative.

Senior Judge Royce Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, during a hearing on Wednesday, pressed the government on its decision to move transgender women inmates to a segregated facility after his June order blocked their transfer to men's prisons. According to Bloomberg Law's Suzanne Monyak, Lamberth told the government's representative, "You're violating my order, aren't you?" and said the refusal to follow the court's directive was insubordinate "on its face."

The litigation stems from an executive order issued by President Donald Trump shortly after taking office, which required transgender women inmates to be transferred to men's prisons and barred federal prisons from providing gender-affirming treatment. The policy was part of a broader slate of early executive actions targeting federal recognition of transgender identity across military service, healthcare, and corrections. After a court order nullified parts of the executive order, the Trump administration moved the inmates to a segregated facility where they were deprived of the same rights granted to other prisoners, prompting the lawsuit.

Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, had previously blocked the federal government from transferring a group of transgender women to men's prison facilities. However, attorneys for the inmates later accused the government of violating the judge's order by instead holding these individuals in a "quasi-solitary unit" without the same work or recreational programming — and by sending additional inmates there as well.

The Trump administration's representative argued that the ruling merely prohibited transferring the inmates to male prisons and asserted there had been "no violation of your order whatsoever," because the order did not require the inmates to "be housed alongside cisgender female inmates or share common spaces."

Lamberth responded that he might have used "poor words" in his original ruling, but said it "never crossed" his mind that the government would respond by placing the transgender inmates in a facility where they had fewer privileges.

The dispute was further complicated by a separate court order issued days earlier by a Texas federal judge, who barred the government from housing any inmates at a federal prison in Fort Worth who are "biologically male, regardless of gender identity" in the general population "where biological females are present or will be confined." The competing directives from federal courts in different jurisdictions underscored the legal gridlock shaping federal corrections policy on transgender inmates. Following that order, the Bureau of Prisons moved four of the transgender women involved in the Washington case — who had been held at the Fort Worth prison — to a "restrictive, segregated unit" with little to no access to recreation, work, or other programming, according to their attorneys, who filed a motion to enforce Lamberth's June order.

The four women in the segregated unit have experienced declining mental health and gender dysphoria, their lawyers said. The government is also moving to transfer all of the transgender inmates in the case, from other parts of the country, to the same unit, the attorneys added. The outcome of the enforcement dispute may determine whether the Bureau of Prisons can continue using restrictive housing for transgender inmates while litigation over the executive order proceeds.

The original article was published by Alternet.