By Mike Carter and Lauren Girgis
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE — The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into the state’s practice of housing transgender women at the Washington Corrections Center for Women near Gig Harbor.
The DOJ states it will investigate allegations that women at the prison were deprived of Eighth Amendment protections from cruel and unusual punishment as a result of the state allowing transgender women to be housed there.
The Department of Corrections started a policy in 2020 allowing incarcerated people to request gender-affirming housing transfers, in addition to designating their preferred name and pronouns.
Under my leadership, the Civil Rights Division will not allow women incarcerated in jails or prisons to be subject to unconstitutional risks of harm from male inmates,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a new release. “The constitutional rights of women cannot be sacrificed at the altar of appeasing unsupported and dangerous ideologies.”
Dhillon announced what she calls the “single-sex prisons initiative” in a video posted on X in March, along with a pair of similar investigations into California and Maine .
The DOJ said it will rely on the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, which gives it the authority to investigate violations of incarcerated people’s constitutional rights.
“Washington State must protect women inmates from the inherent dangers of incarcerating them with biological men,” said Neil Floyd , first assistant U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington.
Department of Corrections spokesperson Chris Wright said that, of more than 740 people incarcerated at the women’s facility, 20 are transgender. That’s a fraction of the roughly 347 incarcerated people who identify as transgender or nonbinary in prisons statewide. Nearly 13,000 people are in DOC custody overall.
“We are reviewing the letter from the Department of Justice and plan to cooperate with federal investigators,” Wright said in response to an email seeking comment from Gov. Bob Ferguson, noting that the state is defending litigation on both sides of the issue. “DOC remains committed to upholding the rights and providing a safe environment for all incarcerated individuals in our custody.”
‘We have not reached any conclusions’
Last month, an incarcerated woman, Faith Booher-Smith, and a nonprofit calling itself the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism sued the Department of Corrections.
She alleges she was assaulted in 2025 by a transgender woman who had been transferred to the Washington Corrections Center for Women from the Monroe Correctional Complex, an all-male facility. Booher-Smith and FAIR say the state’s policy has allowed transgender people to be housed at WCCW and to go into shared living areas, bathrooms, showers and other spaces.
In a letter to Ferguson, the DOJ wrote that “our investigation is based on information the WCCW has failed to protect female prisoners from sexual and physical violence, harassment, voyeurism and intimidation from male prisoners who identify as female and who the (department) has housed at WCCW.”
The letter did not describe in detail what those allegations included, but mentioned the DOJ will work with the state to correct “systemic violations” if they are found.
“We have not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation,” the letter said. “Our investigation will include a comprehensive review of all relevant WCCW and (DOC) policies and practices.”
‘Highly intimidating’
In 2024, Amber Kim became the first transgender person to be moved from gender-affirming housing back to housing that aligns with the sex they were assigned at birth. She was transferred after she received an infraction for having sex, which she called consensual.
Kim, who is serving a life sentence for two counts of first degree murder, said she has since spent nearly two years in solitary confinement at the Monroe Correctional Complex in lieu of being housed with men. In a petition to the court, she alleged the move constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington’s chapter, which is representing Kim in her petition, said in a statement that protections for transgender incarcerated people “exist because of the serious safety risks facing (them).”
“The Department of Justice’s announcement that it is launching an investigation into placement of transgender women at the Washington Correction Center for Women represents another troubling move by the federal government to target transgender people,” the statement read.
Talking over the phone from Monroe on Tuesday, she said she doesn’t think the federal investigation will likely play a role in her case, which is scheduled to be heard in Washington Supreme Court next month, but she does worry about what it means for other transgender people in prisons.
She said she didn’t see “how a person’s transness or lack of transness had anything to do with purported violence. Kim, who has been on estrogen for years, said she has personally lost half her physical strength.
“It is highly intimidating to have these powers on high looking at us, and putting us under the gun,” Kim said.
Seattle Times staff reporter Jim Brunner contributed to this story.
—
© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
