The Supreme Court tossed a federal appeals court ruling on Monday in a dispute over a strip search of a transgender inmate, sending it back to the lower court while pointing to the high court’s recent rulings in transgender cases over sports and surgeries for minors.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit had sided with a biologically male inmate, who identified as a woman, after an El Paso County, Colorado, jail tried to dismiss a lawsuit over the transgender inmate’s treatment. The transgender inmate argued that being subjected to full-body searches by male officers and being housed in male facilities violated the inmate’s constitutional rights, citing alleged abuses during the searches. The 10th Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision to toss the lawsuit, allowing it to move forward, and ruled that gender identity is part of the sex-based protections covered under the Equal Protection Clause, despite recent Supreme Court rulings.
