A person who has undergone sex reassignment surgery is legally and physically the sex they transitioned to, and should be housed accordingly, a trans woman in a women's facility, a trans man in a men's facility. Placing a post-surgical trans woman in a men's facility, or a post-surgical trans man in a women's facility, isn't a neutral administrative decision. It's ignoring reality and calling it something else.

For transgender people who have not undergone surgical transition, placement should still be determined case by case under the Prison Rape Elimination Act, weighing individual safety and facility security, not decided by a blanket rule in either direction.

Current federal policy does neither. It orders transgender women, including those who have completed surgical transition, transferred to men's facilities as a categorical rule, and has directed prison inspectors to stop enforcing the safety protections PREA was built to guarantee. The federal prison system has also moved to end hormone therapy for incarcerated transgender people entirely, denying new access and forcing those already on treatment to taper off, regardless of individual medical need. Courts have already found that blanket denial of this kind of medically necessary care, without individualized assessment, violates the Constitution.

As Senator, Lydia will:

• Require that any incarcerated person who has completed sex reassignment surgery be housed in a facility matching their transitioned sex, as a matter of law, not agency discretion
• Restore and strictly enforce PREA's case-by-case safety assessment standard for transgender people who have not undergone surgical transition
• Restore access to hormone therapy for incarcerated transgender people based on individualized medical assessment, not a categorical ban
• Push to correct federal sentencing and registry data that groups survival sex work with predatory sex offenses, so trans women aren't broadly mislabeled as sex offenders for non-predatory conduct