By Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA — Managing Director, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney, Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.
Status, checked 8 September 2026 — read this first. The Transgender Offender Manual was removed from the Bureau’s published policy set after Executive Order 14168. The Bureau replaced it with Program Statement 5260.01. A federal court has stayed Program Statement 5260.01 and enjoined the Bureau from enforcing it, and has ordered the Bureau to provide care under the policy and practice in effect immediately before 20 January 2025 — which is the Manual described on this page. The government has appealed. Nothing here is stable, and anyone acting on it should confirm the posture on the day they act.
Program Statement 5200.08 at a glance
| Document | Transgender Offender Manual |
|---|---|
| Program Statement | 5200.08 |
| Current publication status | Not in BOP’s published policy set. Verified against the Bureau’s policy list — no 5200.08. The live 5200-series documents are 5200.06 (Management of Inmates With Disabilities) and 5200.09 (Female Offender Manual). |
| What replaced it | Program Statement 5260.01, Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria, signed 19 February 2026 by Director William K. Marshall III |
| Status of the replacement | Stayed and enjoined. Kingdom v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-00691 (D.D.C.), Dkt. 242 (26 Aug. 2026) |
| What governs instead | The Bureau’s policy and practice in effect immediately before 20 January 2025 — the Manual, plus the Bureau’s 2023 clinical guidance |
| Executive Order | Exec. Order 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, 90 Fed. Reg. 8,615 (Jan. 30, 2025) |
| Appeal | D.C. Cir. Nos. 26-5236 and 26-5310, consolidated 1 September 2026. Undecided. |
On this page
What the Manual was
Program Statement 5200.08, the Transgender Offender Manual, was the Bureau’s operating policy for transgender people in federal custody. It governed the two things that matter most day to day: medical and mental-health care, including hormone therapy, and the practical conditions of confinement — housing and designation review, searches, and access to personal items the Bureau now calls “social accommodations.” It also established the Transgender Executive Council as the body that reviewed housing and programming decisions for this population.
The Manual is no longer published by the Bureau, so the operative text is not available from BOP’s policy library. That matters for anyone trying to hold the Bureau to it: the document a court has ordered the Bureau to follow is a document the Bureau has taken down. Copies obtained before January 2025, and the Bureau’s July 2025 internal guidance memo describing the pre-Executive-Order practice, are the practical reference points.
What happened to it
On 20 January 2025 the President signed Executive Order 14168. Section 4(c) directed that the Attorney General “shall ensure that the Bureau of Prisons revises its policies concerning medical care to be consistent with this order, and shall ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.” A separate provision addressed housing. The Manual came down.
Thirteen months later, on 19 February 2026, the Bureau issued Program Statement 5260.01, Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria. It is a clinical policy and it is considerably narrower than what it replaced. In its own words it provides that the Bureau “will not provide sex trait modification surgeries”; that for a person diagnosed with gender dysphoria who is not currently receiving hormones, “the Bureau will not provide hormones to address GD”; that for a person who is receiving hormones, a Multidisciplinary Review Team reviews a “tapering plan” aimed at discontinuation; and that “[t]he Bureau will not provide social accommodations,” and where a person has them, “shall no longer provide the social accommodations and, when practicable, remove or confiscate” them (PS 5260.01 at pp. 7–9).
The policy also says the Bureau “will comply with this Executive Order unless compliance with the Executive Order is prohibited by a court injunction or court order,” and that “[t]hough Executive Order 14,168 supports this policy, the Bureau also adopts this policy independently of Executive Order 14,168” (PS 5260.01 at pp. 6–7). Both sentences turned out to matter.
It was never formally rescinded
This is worth knowing precisely, because it is unusual. When the Bureau replaces a Program Statement it normally says so in the replacement, under a “Program Statement Rescinded” line naming the old number and date. No current Program Statement rescinds 5200.08. We checked every live document in the Bureau’s published policy set for a rescission naming that number and found none — and Program Statement 5260.01 carries no rescission line at all.
More than that, the Manual is still cited as live by policies currently in force: it appears in the references of PS 5321.09 and PS 7331.05, both of which the Bureau publishes today. So the Manual was not superseded in the ordinary way. It was taken off the shelf while the documents that depend on it were left pointing at it.
What actually governs right now
Not Program Statement 5260.01. On 3 June 2025 the District Court for the District of Columbia certified a class of “all persons who are currently or will be incarcerated in BOP facilities with a current diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who receive such a diagnosis in the future” and granted a preliminary injunction. On 17 June 2026 the court enjoined the Bureau “from enforcing Program Statement 5260.01” and ordered it “to provide Plaintiffs and class members gender-affirming care in accordance with BOP policy and practice in effect immediately prior to the issuance of the EO on January 20, 2025.” It separately stayed the Program Statement under 5 U.S.C. § 705.
The reasoning was administrative, not constitutional. The court found the Bureau likely acted arbitrarily by refusing to engage with its own decade of experience providing this care, and treated the policy as pretextual — noting that “[p]ost-hoc rationalizations during litigation cannot replace the type of reasoned analysis the government must undertake at the front end.”
Preliminary relief in prison cases expires by statute every ninety days unless renewed, so this has been re-entered rather than left standing. The operative order is Dkt. 242, entered 26 August 2026 by Judge Royce C. Lamberth, which grants a renewed preliminary injunction and orders “that Program Statement 5260.01 is stayed and that Defendants are ENJOINED from enforcing Program Statement 5260.01 from September 15, 2026 to December 14, 2026.”
The Bureau has told its own wardens as much. The transmittal memo attached to Program Statement 5260.01 states that the Bureau “remains obligated to comply with the preliminary injunction issued on June 3, 2025,” which “requires BOP to provide hormones and social accommodations to inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria under the policy that existed before Executive Order 14168,” and directs staff to a guidance memo issued 16 July 2025 describing that earlier practice (PS 5260.01 at p. 1).
The government has appealed, and the appeal is undecided. As of 8 September 2026 the D.C. Circuit dockets show the government’s appeals at Nos. 26-5236 and 26-5310, consolidated on 1 September 2026. The government moved on 30 June 2026 to stay the district court’s order pending appeal; that motion was fully briefed on 27 July 2026 and the court of appeals has not ruled on it. No appellate stay is in place.
Housing is a separate fight, and it went the other way
Care and housing have been litigated on separate tracks with opposite results so far, and conflating them is the most common mistake made about this subject.
On the housing side, the District Court had preliminarily enjoined transfers of transgender women to men’s facilities. On 17 April 2026 the D.C. Circuit vacated those injunctions and remanded. Two parts of that decision help future litigants and one hurts. The court held that 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b) “does not bar judicial review of constitutional claims challenging BOP’s designation of a place of imprisonment” — a significant ruling, because the Bureau routinely argues that designation is unreviewable. It also held that placement in a Special Housing Unit is not an “available” administrative remedy the PLRA requires a prisoner to exhaust, reasoning that “[a] temporary, stop-gap measure that lacks any capacity to relieve plaintiffs from the ongoing risk of harm in men’s prisons” is not capable of obtaining relief.
But it vacated the injunctions because the district court had rested on a categorical theory — that transgender women face an unconstitutional risk in men’s prisons as a class — which the plaintiffs themselves did not defend on appeal, and the record contained no individualized findings about the particular plaintiffs’ vulnerabilities. The lesson for anyone bringing such a claim is that it has to be built on that person’s specific circumstances and on what the Bureau actually relied on in placing them, not on the category.
The earlier district court decision in that line, Doe v. McHenry, 763 F. Supp. 3d 81 (D.D.C. 2025), accordingly carries negative treatment and should not be cited as though it still stands.
What the Transgender Offender Manual means for you
If you are the person inside: if you have a current diagnosis
If you have a current diagnosis of gender dysphoria, you are within the certified class. The court has ordered the Bureau to provide care under the pre-January-2025 policy, and the Bureau has told its own staff that obligation exists. If hormones have been tapered or stopped, or accommodations confiscated, that is the thing to raise — in writing, naming the court order rather than arguing the merits of the policy. Start with an Inmate Request to Staff, form BP-A0148, to Health Services or Psychology Services. Keep a copy of everything you send and everything you get back. Dates matter here more than usual, because the injunction runs in defined windows.
If you are a family member: the documentary record
The most useful things you can do are documentary. Records of a diagnosis and of treatment before custody carry weight, and the Bureau has forms for releasing them — BP-A0171 for mental-health records and BP-A0621 for medical records. If care has been interrupted, write down when, by whom, and what was said, because the person inside may not be able to keep records safely. Class counsel in the litigation are reachable; you do not need to retain anyone to be covered by a class-wide injunction.
If you are counsel: the Transgender Offender Manual
Check the posture before every filing — the injunction is renewed in ninety-day increments and a consolidated appeal is pending on a fully briefed stay motion. On care, the winning theory so far has been the APA, not the Eighth Amendment; the district court did not reach the constitutional claims. On housing, the D.C. Circuit has told you what it needs: individualized findings about this client, and evidence of what the Bureau actually relied on in the original designation. The § 3621(b) reviewability holding and the SHU-exhaustion holding are both useful well beyond this subject matter.
Where people get stuck when staff follow the policy, not the injunction
Staff follow the Program Statement, not the injunction
This is the central practical problem. The written policy in a staff member’s hands says taper the hormones and confiscate the accommodations. The court order says provide them. The Bureau’s own transmittal memo resolves the conflict in favor of the order — which makes that memo, attached to the front of Program Statement 5260.01, the single most useful document to point at.
The governing document has been taken down
You are being asked to hold the Bureau to a manual it no longer publishes. Pre-2025 copies and the July 2025 guidance memo are the workable substitutes, and a records request is the formal route to the Bureau’s own version.
“No private right of action”
Program Statement 5260.01 states that nothing in it “is intended, nor shall it be construed, to create a private cause of action” (PS 5260.01 at p. 10). That is true of Program Statements generally and it does not affect class membership, the injunction, or a constitutional claim. The same section also says nothing in the policy “shall prevent a prison official from providing care required by federal law, including the Eighth Amendment.”
Frequently Asked Questions About the Transgender Offender Manual
Is the Transgender Offender Manual still in effect?
It is not published by the Bureau — Program Statement 5200.08 no longer appears in BOP’s policy set. But a federal court has ordered the Bureau to provide care under the policy and practice in effect immediately before 20 January 2025, which is that Manual. So the document is unpublished and, for the certified class, operative at the same time.
What is Program Statement 5260.01?
It is the policy BOP issued on 19 February 2026 to replace the Manual, titled Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria. It provides no sex trait modification surgeries, no hormones for anyone not already receiving them, tapering plans aimed at discontinuation for those who are, and no social accommodations. It is currently stayed and its enforcement enjoined.
Who is covered by the court order?
The certified class is “all persons who are currently or will be incarcerated in BOP facilities with a current diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who receive such a diagnosis in the future.” A current diagnosis is the trigger. Nobody has to hire a lawyer or file anything to be a class member.
Can the Bureau taper or stop hormone therapy right now?
Not as to class members. The operative order stays Program Statement 5260.01 and enjoins its enforcement from 15 September to 14 December 2026, and directs care under the pre-January-2025 policy. BOP’s own transmittal memo tells staff the same thing. If tapering is happening anyway, that is the discrepancy to raise in writing.
Does any of this decide where someone is housed?
No. Housing has been litigated separately and came out differently — the D.C. Circuit vacated the transfer injunctions on 17 April 2026 and sent the case back for individualized findings. It did hold that 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b) does not bar constitutional challenges to designation, and that a Special Housing Unit is not an adequate substitute for safe placement.
Is the government appealing?
Yes. The appeals are consolidated in the D.C. Circuit at Nos. 26-5236 and 26-5310. The government asked the court of appeals to stay the district court’s order pending appeal; that motion was fully briefed on 27 July 2026 and, as of 8 September 2026, remains undecided. No appellate stay is in place.
Related BOP policy on transgender and gender dysphoria
| Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria (PS 5260.01) | The replacement policy, section by section, with the Bureau’s own text |
| Treatment and care of inmates with mental illness | PS 5310.16, which sets the mental-health care levels this policy runs on |
| Patient care | The Bureau’s general medical-care policy |
| PREA and sexual abuse prevention | The screening standards that bear on housing decisions |
| Special Housing Units | What the D.C. Circuit held is not an adequate substitute for safe placement |
| Administrative Remedy Program | PS 1330.18 — the BP-9 / BP-10 / BP-11 route |
| FOIA and Privacy Act requests | How to request the Bureau’s own records, including unpublished guidance |
Authority checked 8 September 2026 against BOP’s published policy set and the dockets in Kingdom v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-00691 (D.D.C.), and D.C. Cir. Nos. 26-5236 and 26-5310. This is active litigation on a ninety-day cycle. Confirm the current posture before relying on any of it.
Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026