The Trump administration on Sept. 28 asked the Supreme Court to pause a nationwide injunction forcing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to keep providing hormone treatments and related services to inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed the emergency application in Trump v. Kingdom that asks the justices to put on hold a federal district judge’s order that blocks a 2026 BOP policy that shuts down transgender surgeries, hormone treatments, and social accommodations such as makeup and wigs.

The federal government says the policy, which is called Program Statement 5260.01, is necessary for prison security.

The lead plaintiff in the class action is Alishea Sophia Kingdom, a man who identifies as female.

Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia previously blocked the policy. In June of this year, he issued a written opinion saying that the program statement “amounts to arbitrary and capricious agency action” and that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The act is the federal law that establishes the rules for how agencies make and change policies. When an agency reverses course, a court can block the action if the explanation falls short of the statute’s requirements.

Lamberth’s latest order from Aug. 26 directs the BOP to keep providing hormone treatments and related accommodations to inmates who have a gender dysphoria diagnosis and to inmates who later receive one. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit later declined to stay Lamberth’s order.

Sauer said Lamberth’s ruling “denied prison administrators the substantial deference they are due.” If the preliminary injunction remains, it interferes with administrators’ expert judgment about how to administer federal prisons, he said.

“In nullifying BOP’s exercise of its statutorily conferred authority to adopt a policy that prison administrators have determined is necessary to maintain institutional security, the court’s order causes irreparable harm to the government and to the public,” Sauer said.

The BOP policy came after President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14168 in 2025. The order, which rescinded several Biden-era executive orders on so-called gender identity, states that the federal government recognizes two sexes, male and female. It also states that “sex” is not a synonym for gender identity.

The order directs federal agencies to apply those definitions in statutes, regulations, forms, and government IDs, including passports. It also bars federal funds from being used to promote gender ideology.

Section 4(c) instructs the attorney general to revise BOP medical policy to comply with the order and ensure that no federal funds be used for any procedure, treatment, or drug “for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

Chief Justice John Roberts directed the other side to respond to the application by 4 p.m. on Oct. 8.