The Supreme Court on Wednesday handed President Donald Trump a surprising setback, denying his administration’s emergency request to immediately enforce a contentious new policy while a legal challenge plays out. The 7-2 order blocks, for now, a plan to deny gender-affirming care to transgender inmates in federal prisons. It does not resolve the underlying merits of the case, which remains ongoing.

The court’s most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented. The ruling came without any explanation, which — as USA Today noted — is common for decisions made on emergency requests.

The dispute stems from a policy announced by the Bureau of Prisons in February. “Transgender inmates incarcerated at federal correctional institutions in New Jersey, Florida and Minnesota filed a class action lawsuit challenging the rules,” the report detailed. Under the policy, transgender inmates can no longer receive surgical or hormonal treatments, and they are also barred from “social accommodations,” such as makeup and wigs.

The Justice Department has said the changes “reflect the latest scientific information” about treatments for gender dysphoria and are needed “to maintain institutional security.” The government’s stated concerns include the potential for inmates to become targets for attacks, resentment breeding among other inmates, and undermining the bureau’s “reasonable practice of refusing to reward threats of self-harm.”

NBC News reported that the administration’s claims about a changing scientific consensus behind gender-affirming care have been “heavily contested by transgender rights advocates.”

In the case, captioned Trump v. Kingdom, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court in its emergency application that the judge’s “demand for additional evidence” conflicted with the “double deference” the Bureau of Prisons is due in this context. Lawyers for the transgender inmates countered in their opposition to the stay application that the government had not shown it would be harmed unless the policy could be implemented immediately, while the nearly 1,000 affected inmates face a “serious risk of worsening gender dysphoria as well as other mental health symptoms including depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidality.”

The policy change forms part of the administration’s broader effort to rein in transgender rights, which began on the first day of Trump’s second term, when he signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to “recognize two sexes, male and female,” and declaring that “these sexes are not changeable.”

While Wednesday’s decision marks a setback for the administration, USA Today noted that the conservative-led Supreme Court has a long history of backing Trump’s efforts to target transgender individuals. It previously ruled that the administration could exclude transgender people from military service and require that passports list the gender someone was assigned at birth. More recently, the court also ruled that states are allowed to block transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports and could ban gender-affirming care for minors.

Source: Alternet