OAN Workers Katherine Mosack and Brooke Mallory6:33 PM – Thursday, March 26, 2026
The Trump administration has launched federal investigations into California and Maine following allegations of sexual assault and violent harassment linked to insurance policies that home organic males with gender dysphoria in feminine correctional services.
The U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) introduced on Thursday that it’s probing whether or not the presence of organic males in girls’s prisons violates the constitutional rights of feminine inmates, particularly citing experiences of rape and a case of being pregnant ensuing from these placements.
Governors Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) and Janet Mills (D-Maine) had been formally notified of the investigation, which goals to find out if these state-level housing mandates infringe upon the eighth and 14th Modification protections afforded to the feminine jail inhabitants.
“The Justice Division will examine whether or not California engages in a sample or apply of violating the constitutional rights of feminine prisoners incarcerated on the California Establishment for Ladies (CIW) in San Bernardino County and the Central California Ladies’s Facility (CCWF) in Madera County,” the assertion learn. “The Justice Division additionally will examine whether or not Maine equally engages in a sample or apply of violating constitutional rights of ladies incarcerated at Maine Correctional Middle in Windham (MCC Windham).”
The investigations had been prompted by a California-based marketing campaign led by girls’s rights teams Ladies Are Actual and WomanIIWoman. The teams are drawing consideration to the slew of ongoing experiences of sexual assaults dedicated by gender dysphoric male inmates towards girls in correctional services.
On the coronary heart of the marketing campaign lies the high-profile authorized proceedings involving 52-year-old Tremaine Carroll. The case gained important consideration following expenses filed in March, which allege that Carroll — a organic male who identifies as a girl — raped a feminine inmate, impregnating her, whereas incarcerated on the Central California Ladies’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla.
“After his first cellmate turned pregnant and was moved to Los Angeles, two different cellmates of his had complained that he had raped them, so we have now filed rape expenses towards this inmate,” mentioned Madera County District Lawyer Sally Moreno, who additionally asserted that “it is a one who is just not a girl in any sense of the phrase.”
Carroll was despatched to a girls’s jail below California Senate Invoice 132, the Transgender Respect, Company, and Dignity Act, signed by Newsom in 2020. A Madera County decide dominated in February that the inmate should be referred to utilizing female pronouns.
“California’s Transgender Respect, Company, and Dignity Act has supplied none of those qualities to the feminine inmates of state prisons who’ve been pressured to share house with organic males who’re violent felons,” mentioned First Assistant United States Lawyer Invoice Essayli of the Central District of California. “Our Structure protects girls from having their civil rights violated by dangerous state laws wrapped within the language of ‘fairness’ and ‘progress.’”
The DOJ additional vowed to analyze allegations of the “deprivation of feminine prisoners’ rights.”
“Preserving males out of ladies’s prisons is just not solely widespread sense – it’s a matter of security and constitutional rights,” mentioned Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi within the DOJ’s assertion. “The Trump Administration is not going to stand by if governors are facilitating the abuse of organic girls below the guise of inclusion.”
“Beneath my management, the Civil Rights Division is not going to permit girls incarcerated in jails or prisons to be topic to unconstitutional dangers of hurt from male inmates,” said Assistant Lawyer Normal Harmeet Okay. Dhillon. “These investigations will uncover whether or not the harmful nationwide development of housing males in girls’s prisons has resulted in violations of ladies’s constitutional rights.”
Along with the authorized updates, Dhillon shared the formal correspondence dispatched to the 2 Democrat governors. These letters function an official notification that ought to any constitutional violations be recognized inside their respective states, the DOJ intends to “try to work with the state to treatment these violations.”
By phrasing the outreach this manner, the DOJ seems to be signaling a desire for collaborative reform over fast litigation, whereas nonetheless making it clear that federal oversight is actively being utilized to state-level operations.
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