Last week in Fleming vs. Warden T. Rule, the DOJ agreed to a permanent injunction forbidding the warden of Federal Medical Center-Carswell, a specialized prison in Fort Worth for women primarily with medical and mental health needs, from placing transgender prisoners in the same unit as the plaintiffs.

The ruling is considered the first of its kind that would order federal officials to move biological males who identify as women permanently away from the female prison population.

However, the plaintiffs told the Washington Examiner that negotiations are currently held up over the DOJ’s willingness, or what they say is its apparent reluctance, to award damages to the injured women.

The standoff has left some women’s rights advocates puzzled by what they see as an about-face. Under former President Joe Biden, prison assignments adhered to self-asserted gender identity.

“I am very surprised that the government does not want to compensate me, who was true to the cause for over a decade,” lead plaintiff Rhonda Fleming, a longtime litigant fighting the infiltration of biological males in women’s prisons, told the Washington Examiner. “Basically, the government wants to admit women were harmed, but give nothing in compensation and/or protection.”

Fleming, 60, suspects that the federal government does not want to grant them what they are owed in damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act, as doing so might mean that authorities would be compelled to recompense thousands of women who were wrongly imprisoned with male inmates over the past decade.

“The government is afraid that by compensating us, because so many women were harmed, it will cause the government to compensate 10,000 or more women,” Fleming said.

Elspeth Cypher, a retired Massachusetts Supreme Court justice serving as president of the Women’s Liberation Front, a women’s rights advocacy organization, offered a similar explanation as to why the Trump administration may be so hesitant about awarding compensation.

“It would set a precedent for other women in similar situations,” Cypher told the Washington Examiner. “There are a lot of women in these situations, some in state courts.”

Cypher noted that it is not “a one-to-one problem” since the women are forced to share intimate spaces, such as communal showers and changing areas, with biological males assigned to the same living quarters. “One trans-identifying male prisoner does not just bother one woman, but as many as there are in the unit,” she said.

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Indeed, five more women who allege unsafe housing conditions at FMC Carswell recently came forward to ask the court to be added as co-plaintiffs to Fleming’s civil rights complaint. The female inmates, like Fleming, reported being sexually abused by some of the trans-identifying males.

Two of the women alleged that they had witnessed male prisoners peeking into the shower stalls, standing at the bathroom sinks with “visible erections,” and “rubbing” on female inmates in the medical area against their consent.

Three others, in a separate motion to be included in Fleming’s lawsuit, said the women at FMC Carswell live in “constant fear of sexual assault,” many of them too afraid to use the bathroom by themselves.

Fleming’s original co-plaintiff, Miriam “Mimi” Herrera, said she has been a victim of voyeurism and sexual predation inside FMC Carswell’s restroom facilities. “They can see us shower,” Herrera previously told the Washington Examiner. “I have been stalked in the showers before.”

Other than the potential domino effect of paying damages, the Trump administration could be tiptoeing around the delicate matter on account of Jane Doe v. Pam Bondi, another transgender prison housing case.

Nineteen male inmates, who identify as women, are anonymously challenging Trump’s directive to separate federal detention facilities by biological sex. The transgender plaintiffs, all residing in female-only penitentiaries, filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration to prevent their transfer to men’s prisons.

“Theoretically, they should be on the side of the women given the executive orders from President Trump,” Cypher said of the DOJ, “but the stay from Doe v. Bondi is still in effect.”

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Cypher explained that some attorneys interpret the injunctions in Doe, which temporarily bar the Federal Bureau of Prisons from removing the biological males from women’s prisons pending resolution of the case, as a nationwide restraint.

“I think that was why [Fleming’s] case was carefully handled so that it wouldn’t violate those injunctions,” Cypher said.

As written, the order of protection issued in Fleming on Feb. 2 stipulates that males are not to be removed entirely from FMC Carswell, but are to be relocated to a different block within the facility.

Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, indicated in the partial final judgment that he is being careful not to overstep his authority before Doe v. Bondi is decided at the appellate level.

“Nothing in this Order requires or authorizes action that would contravene any existing, valid federal court order,” Fitzwater wrote.

The order also applies only to plaintiffs explicitly named in the case, which is why several women sought to join Fleming’s legal fight to receive protection as well.

To comply with the court order, which is structured the same way as the previously issued temporary restraining order, federal officials are allowed, at their discretion, to reassign the male detainees away from the plaintiffs’ housing units or confine them to “a secure, segregated area” at FMC Carswell.

Following the initial separation instructions, FMC Carswell simply moved the trans-identifying males into other women’s housing units with inmates who were not named as co-plaintiffs. Those women subsequently suffered sexual abuse once the males were moved to their units, according to exhibits filed in support of the intervention requests.

“Instead of solving the problem, he chose to injure different women,” the plaintiff attorneys said of Warden Tyal Rule in a December 2025 court filing.

For now, the final housing order does not prohibit the males from accessing other parts of the prison. Fitzwater, nevertheless, may consider granting legal relief to the joining plaintiffs.

Fleming said the attorneys were strategically adding additional plaintiffs to effectively fan out the protective order’s coverage across the prison and ensure that the males are cordoned off in one area.

The plaintiffs furthermore sought to include language in the permanent injunction specifying that it would apply to all BOP facilities.

Ahead of a Jan. 30 preliminary injunction hearing, DOJ officials acknowledged that they “do not want to house any male inmates with female inmates (regardless of what the institution is), but they have some operational concerns about Plaintiffs’ interpretation of the Court’s Order (as well as Plaintiffs’ proposed language) in relation to the scope of this case.”

The government raised questions about how, if adopted, the plaintiffs’ language would apply at other institutions with different conditions of confinement. For instance, some facilities have locked doors on individual cells and bathrooms, unlike in the general-population units at FMC Carswell.

According to a joint status report, both parties agreed that moving all male inmates at FMC Carswell to a segregated unit “seemingly would be the most straightforward way of addressing all plaintiffs’ (including Intervening Plaintiffs’) concerns in this case (short of removing the male inmates from FMC Carswell entirely).”

The plaintiffs, however, argued that the permanent injunction, if phrased to ensure full segregation, would not conflict with the existing Doe v. Bondi injunctions, while government officials believed that the Bondi case restrains BOP from fully segregating the males, a move which, according to the DOJ’s argument, would require the activation of a new, all-male housing unit.

When contacted by the Washington Examiner about the pending litigation, the DOJ reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to defending women, including incarcerated women, from the harms of gender ideology.

“For years, biological men convicted of serious violent crimes have been housed in women’s prisons based solely on self-identified gender as female, raising documented safety concerns from staff and inmates about risks of sexual assault from biologically male prisoners,” a DOJ official told the Washington Examiner, adding, “This Administration is committed to protecting women, including those in custody, and will continue efforts to reaffirm biological reality and safeguard women’s spaces.”

Fleming said she is willing to waive damages if the government agrees to place her in a halfway house close to her elderly mother in Houston for the remainder of her sentence. Fleming, a former FMC Carswell inmate, is currently held far from home at a satellite camp in Lexington, Kentucky, about 1,000 miles away.

“It is an old story,” Fleming said. “Women get shafted, no matter what they are willing to surrender.”

Fleming suggested that the federal government allocate funds to victims based on the level of harm that they have suffered.

She said some of the women need mental health care after being forced to undress in the presence of male inmates, many of whom are convicted sex offenders.

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The transgender inmates currently incarcerated at FMC Carswell include Michael D. Reed, who reportedly raped a 75-year-old woman and pleaded guilty to kidnapping plus indecent acts with a child, and serial child rapist July Justine Shelby, who is behind bars for distributing child sexual abuse images.

“Psychology services in the prison told me and other women that WE were delusional not to accept these ‘women.’ I think that may be called mental health malpractice,” Fleming said.