By S.P. Sullivan
nj.com
TRENTON — New Jersey’s prison system will house most inmates based on their gender identity and provide better mental health and medical care for gender non-conforming prisoners under a major settlement with a transgender woman who says she was housed in a men’s prison and abused by inmates and officers alike.
Sonia Doe spent more than a year being shuffled from one men’s prison to another, despite being identified as a woman on her driver’s license. Over those months, she said, she was sexually harassed by male inmates and mocked and assaulted by corrections officers.
Doe, whose real name is withheld in court papers, sued state authorities in 2019, declaring: “I am a woman and feel unsafe in a men’s prison.”
According to her lawsuit, Doe faced trouble getting regular access to her hormone medication, was denied bras and tweezers and other items regularly provided to female inmates and put into solitary confinement when she complained about conditions.
Under the settlement, signed Monday, the state Department of Corrections will require prisoners be housed in line with their gender identity and require staff to use their preferred pronouns. It also will provide “gender-affirming care.” The policy does not define what such care includes, but trans prisoner advocates say such health care could mean hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery as deemed “medically necessary” by the department’s doctors.
Tess Borden, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which brought the suit, called the agreement “a total reversal of the prior problematic and unlawful practice” of placing trans women in male prisons.
“This is really historic,” she said. “It’s something New Jersey should be proud of.”
The move makes New Jersey one of just a handful of states, including California and Massachusetts, with detailed policies on housing and providing medical care to trans prisoners.
Doe declined an interview request, but through her attorneys said she was haunted by her experience in New Jersey’s men’s prisons.
“Though I still have nightmares about that time, it’s a relief to know that as a result of my experience the NJDOC has adopted substantial policy changes so no person should be subjected to the horrors I survived,” she said in a statement.
Under the settlement, Doe will receive $125,000 in damages and $45,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Chris Carden, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections, described the agreement as “significant steps in the right direction” that updated the department’s existing policies for housing trans inmates.
But Doe and her attorneys alleged in the suit that the prison system’s unwritten policy for decades was to house prisoners based on their genitalia, “which meant trans folks including our client were not housed according to their gender identity,” according to Borden.
The department, Carden said, now “takes careful measures to ensure they are properly housed in-line with their gender identity and their housing preferences, while ensuring both their safety and the security of the institution.”
Several transgender women are held at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women, a prison with an uncertain future. Gov. Phil Murphy recently announced his intention to shutter the Hunterdon County facility amid cases of sexual abuse and physical assaults of inmates by staff. While Doe’s suit was pending, multiple transgender inmates were transferred to the women’s prison, according to inmates and advocates.
The state’s major corrections officers union initially filed suit to halt the policy change, citing a lack of clear rules for handling sensitive issues like cross-gender strip searches. Aside from those issues, said PBA 105 President William Sullivan on Monday, the union had no concerns over how prisoners are identified or where they are housed.
“Some of the officers have religious and personal issues with that, so that’s the only issue,” he said.
Robyn Gigl, another attorney representing Doe, said she hoped the new policy “will shepherd in a new era in New Jersey prisons of protecting and affirming transgender, intersex, and non-binary people’s lives.”
Gigl said medical care is a fundamental human right.
“We wouldn’t deny someone who is incarcerated treatment for a heart condition or cancer — that would be cruel and unusual punishment,” she said.
“To the extent that trans people deserve to be treated with respect, to deny them that care would be cruel and unusual.”
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