Mississippi Prisons May Further Discriminate Against Trans People

Last month, Mississippi lawmakers advanced a bill which would allow inmates to sue prisons if they are housed with a transgender person.

HB 585, the so-called “Dignity and Safety for Incarcerated Women Act,” would require facilities such as restrooms and sleeping quarters to be segregated by “person’s biological sex, either male or female, as observed or clinically verified at birth.” Under this law, inmates who encounter someone of the “opposite sex” in one of these designated areas would be permitted to sue to prison.

Trans inmates, and trans women in particular, who are housed according to sex are far more vulnerable to harassment and assault, including sexual assault. According to a 2020 NBC report, 9 out of 10 trans women in a prison in California were sexually harassed by fellow inmates. A prison report from 2022 found that less than 15% of trans inmates who requested a transfer to a different-sex prison even received a hearing, and the majority who submitted such requests were transfem. Dozens of states are trying to limit access to healthcare for trans inmates, further increasing the danger posed to them.

According the the bill’s sponsor, Representative Gene Newman (R), the bill was partially written by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a right-wing nonprofit legal organization which regularly tries to overturn or restrict LGBTQ+ rights. The organization also prides itself on having contributed to the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Newman himself previously sponsored Mississippi’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. It should be noted that Newman could not list a single example of trans “infringement” in prison spaces, which are already sex-segregated. Instead, the only reason he provided was, “Just watching things that’s happening around the country; I mean, you’ve got girls sports. You’ve got men that are pretending to be women just to win. It’s going to happen in prison. Men shouldn’t be in with women. Period.”

HB 585 has yet to be considered by the full Republican-dominated State House, and from there it will move on to the Senate where Republicans hold a supermajority.