Colorado prisons sticking to state court decree in dealing with transgender inmates

Colorado prisons and jails appear to be staying the course, for now, in the face of one of President Donald Trump's new executive orders requiring transgender women in federal custody to move to men’s prisons.

Instead, the Colorado Department of Corrections is carrying out mandated changes to the state’s system under a 2019 class-action lawsuit filed in Denver District Court, which originated with seven transgender women housed in men’s prisons and grew to involve some 300 participants.

The lawsuit alleged that policies and practices in the state’s correctional facilities discriminated against transgender women by not recognizing them as women and therefore subjected them to unreasonable risks of violence, failed to provide necessary accommodations, and delivered inadequate medical and mental health care.

On March 26, 2024, the case produced a court-ordered plan called a consent decree that required system reform to benefit inmates who are transgender women, meaning they were born as biological males but identify as females.

“The Colorado Department of Corrections has been working diligently to implement the requirements of the consent decree, collaborating with outside experts in transgender health to develop and refine policies that address the needs of transgender individuals in our facilities,” Corrections spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said via email.

In addition to still being under state court mandate, one line of thought in continuing with the consent decree is the opposition some of Trump’s executive orders have produced, said Paula Greisen, an attorney with Greisen Medlock of Denver, who represented plaintiffs in the Colorado class-action lawsuit.

At least two lawsuits in other states are challenging the executive order to keep incarcerated transgender women in men’s prisons.

“I think what we’re seeing across the country is these executive orders are by and large being stayed or halted by federal courts because they implicate important Constitutional rights, so I know that several federal prisons across the country are not implementing his executive orders with respect to gender-affirming care,” Greisen said.

“If there has been a medical diagnosis that medical care is necessary, the Constitution has to be followed, so there are federal judges who are requiring the prisons to provide medically necessary care,” she said. “As far as I know, the president cannot change constitutional mandates by issuing an executive order, which is what you’re seeing being played out in different courts.”

During a press briefing on Wednesday in Washington, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said federal judges’ court rulings against the president’s basic executive authority displayed through new executive orders are coming from “judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law," and she said that it was those judges creating a "constitutional crisis.”

Trump said Tuesday that federal judges’ decisions against his executive orders constitute “a very serious violation.”

As of Dec. 31, the Colorado Department of Corrections “successfully completed numerous obligations outlined in the consent decree,” Gonzalez-Garcia said.

A final report is being prepared about the department’s compliance, she said, but is not yet available.

The Department of Corrections also was ordered to pay $2.15 million to transgender women claiming damages, with amounts received awarded according to injuries suffered, and make a $4,000 incentive payment to each of the named plaintiffs.

Designated housing units 

Among the new developments ordered in Colorado, two designated housing units have been created for transgender women — this for the first time nationwide.

A temporary “integration unit” at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility, the state’s largest prison for female inmates at all custody levels, enables transgender women to acclimate and prepare to transition to the women’s general population. The unit maintains at least 44 beds for offenders approved for such housing.

Also, a “voluntary transgender unit” at the Sterling Correctional Facility in northeast Colorado, the state’s largest prison for men, has been developed with at least 100 beds for transgender women who want to be housed together while fulfilling their sentences.

Gonzalez-Garcia said updates to the administrative regulation adopted in October 2024 as “Practices Concerning Transgender Offenders” are being finalized, after “conducting a comprehensive review of all housing placement requests submitted by transgender individuals and issuing decision letters to all applicants.”

The process for determining housing placements involves a multidisciplinary team, whose members take into consideration the individual's safety, gender identity and other related factors, Gonzalez-Garcia said.

“While this approach was previously used in some situations, the consent decree has allowed us to refine and implement it consistently across all facilities,” she said.

Agency-wide training on the updated policies and procedures was also completed.

The department has enhanced intake procedures to “ensure that transgender individuals are appropriately identified and their needs assessed.”

Also, access to “gender-affirming medical care,” including hormone therapy, has been expanded in line with established medical protocols, according to Gonzalez-Garcia.

“Transgender individuals in our custody can now request housing and medical accommodations through a clearly defined process, reinforcing CDOC’s commitment to ensuring a safe and inclusive environment for all,” she said.

Under the consent decree, a male correctional officer can no longer perform a strip search on a transgender woman, and there are private areas to bathe and dress, separate bathing times and full screens to shield transgender women from other inmates and male staff when using restrooms, bathing or dressing.

Staff must use pronouns that correspond to inmates’ gender identity — another condition that is in opposition to a new presidential executive order for federal agencies.

Employees who “repeatedly or purposefully misgender” a transgender woman may undergo corrective and/or disciplinary action, according to the consent decree.

Educational materials about transgender issues have been developed and made available to staff and inmates.

At the local criminal justice level, all inmates of the Teller County jail are housed by biological status in categories of males and females, said Cmdr. Kevin Tedesco of the Teller County Sheriff’s Office. 

Transgender inmates are housed separately “so they would not be exposed to vulnerabilities and/or risks with general inmates who would not corroborate the same feeling or belief,” he said.

Having transgender inmates in custody doesn’t happen often, Tedesco said, so rarely that he doesn’t recall the last time the issue might have come up.

Upon arriving at the El Paso County jail, transgender individuals are searched by a person with a gender of their preference, said spokeswoman Cassandra Sebastian.

Initial housing assignments are based on gender identification as it appears on documents or in an official law enforcement database, the inmate’s appearance, previous bookings, medical records or incident reports and preference of gender for pat or strip searches, she said.

If a “well-informed housing decision” cannot be made, “for the safety of the transgender inmate and other inmates currently in the facility,” a transgender inmate will be housed in a medical unit, pending an interview with a classification specialist, Sebastian said. Housing in a medical unit is not punitive, she added.

Transgender women targeted

Transgender women incarcerated in men’s prisons have experienced overt discrimination and violence to the point of “everything you can imagine happening to these women happened,” Greisen, the attorney said.

“What was happening in Colorado is emblematic of what’s happening around the country — transgender women have been routinely housed in men’s facilities and get subjected to sex trafficking, rape, horrific physical assaults and violent unsafe conditions,” she said.

Transgender women offenders also have been tattooed by gangs to show they were gang property and passed around as sexual favors.

“My clients are women, they present as women and were treated as such by the men,” Greisen said. “The impetus of the lawsuit was to keep these women, as all people should be, safe regardless of where they’re being held, to provide them safe living conditions as required by the Constitution and to ensure they get the medical treatment they need.”

Transgender women sent to men’s prisons are 13 times more likely to be sexually assaulted while incarcerated, according to a 2007 study of six prisons in California by the University of California Irvine Center for Evidence-Based Corrections.

One of the original seven plaintiffs in the Colorado lawsuit is a Colorado Springs resident who was released from prison in 2020, started her own business and is working on an undergraduate degree in finance.

“She’s a success story in every way imaginable and has enormous inner strength. She was able to come out of a really horrible situation and show great courage,” Greisen said.

The woman did not want to talk about her experience or give her name, saying she believes she recently lost a job because of the situation.

But she previously has said, including in the lawsuit, that as a transgender woman living in a men’s prison, she was a target for victimization, including sexual assault and extortion.

While transgender women in prison can receive surgery, primarily using Medicare or Medicaid coverage, to reflect their identity under a treatment plan for gender dysphoria — a medically defined condition that causes severe psychological stress from feeling that one's gender identity does not match one's sex at birth — Greisen said it’s not common, as it involves a complex medical and mental determination process. Thus, hormone therapy is primarily offered for transgender women and transgender men inmates, she said.

“It’s state law that state agencies cannot discriminate against people because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, in the provision of any service they provide,” Greisen said. “If a doctor has determined there is medically necessary care an individual needs, then any government agency has to provide it.”