Transgender prisoners file to keep identities concealed after female plaintiffs identified inmates as sex offenders

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 In Fleming, the female plaintiffs alleged, verbatim to the Jane Doe exhibits, specific incidents of sexual predation at FMC Carswell.The women’s intervention motion in Jane Doe mentioned that several of the biological males at FMC Carswell were convicted of rape, sex offenses, and other violent crimes against women and children. For instance, Zack Lawrence was convicted of distributing child pornography and attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity. One of the Fleming co-plaintiffs said Lawrence sexually assaulted a female inmate while at FMC Carswell, according to almost-identical declarations in the Fleming docket except for the now crossed-out segments of the Jane Doe exhibits that had identified the biologically male perpetrators by name.Three other women reported that Gary Boone, who was convicted in connection with a pipe bombing that killed his wife’s lover, gawked at them in the shower stalls, made crude comments about helping one woman wipe her vagina as she used the restroom, and solicited sex in exchange for commissary. The women filed declarations, alleging sexual abuse at the hands of several biologically male inmates at FMC Carswell, in the Fleming case. (Fleming v. Warden T. Rule) The sections naming Lawrence and Boone, among other paragraphs, were completely blacked out from the women’s written testimony filed in Jane Doe. Heavily redacted exhibits, entered as an intervention filing in the Jane Doe case, came directly from the Fleming docket. (Jane Doe v. Blanche) According to the biological males’ argument, if the passages from the intervention filing were uncensored, the public could simply cross-check these detailed accounts against the Fleming declarations “describing specific, unproven allegations of misconduct attributed to particular individuals” and figure out who is being referenced based on matching information.The biological males claimed that the Fleming intervenors, as not-yet-approved parties to the case, disregarded existing court orders when they first filed for intervention and that Lamberth properly enforced said protections.However, the Fleming intervenors are not seeking to name the Jane Doe plaintiffs. Rather, the women merely want to unredact the factual events of the narrative without naming an individual or else only redact their names, while including the rest of the paragraphs in full, to narrow down the broad redactions.The women noted, regardless, that they believe their intervention filing should have remained intact without any redactions, as the evidence that the intervenors attached is on the public docket in Fleming. The affixed Jane Doe exhibits were, in fact, preserved copies of the women’s Fleming declarations, presenting sworn statements from incarcerated women concerning prison conditions, bodily privacy violations, and institutional responses to reports of misconduct. The front entrance of the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas, Saturday, May 16, 2020. (AP Photo/LM Otero) “Requiring the information to remain under seal fails to abide by the presumption of public access,” the women’s attorneys wrote, arguing that the sealing decision redacts more information than the common-law right of public access to judicial records allows or that the protective order itself demands.John Greil, one of the lawyers representing the intervening female plaintiffs, emphasized to the Washington Examiner that the case involves an issue that affects thousands of incarcerated women and a long-litigated prison policy that has been at the center of an important political debate.“As we explained in our motion,” Greil said, “the right of public access to judicial records is a fundamental element of the rule of law, important to maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of an independent judicial branch.”“The public deserves a transparent account of the facts and arguments that shape our public policies and constitutional rights,” Greil added.Rhonda Fleming, the lead plaintiff in the Texas case, criticized the legal protections granted by Lamberth to preserve the biological males’ anonymity in open court.MORE FEMALE INMATES ALLEGE SEXUAL ABUSE IN TRANSGENDER SEPARATION CASE“I am incarcerated for wire fraud, so I can’t ever expect to have a job in a bank or the financial industry due to my past unlawful conduct,” Fleming told the Washington Examiner. “The same should apply to biological, sex offender male inmates! No women’s prisons!”Fleming further questioned, “Even if someone sincerely believes a man can be a woman, why would we allow male inmates who are sex offenders access to biological women in a prison setting?”