By Joshua Arnold

In new court filings, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division on Friday reversed the position it took under President Biden endorsing gender transition surgeries for inmates. The filings come as the Trump administration DOJ radically reforms its Civil Rights Division.

The Biden DOJ had filed statements of interest (SOI) in two cases in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, in what a DOJ press release called “manipulation of supposed medical guidelines to try to create an inmate’s right to optional surgeries where no such entitlement exists.”

On Friday, the DOJ withdrew its previous statement of interest in Doe v. Georgia Dep’t. of Corrections because “the United States has since disavowed the scientific theories on which the Doe SOI was based.” It explained that the statement relied entirely on guidelines from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) and noted the Biden administration’s improper political influence on these guidelines, as well as other revelations calling into question the reliability of WPATH as an organization. It also pointed out the greater skepticism with which European countries now view gender transition procedures, especially the Cass Report from the U.K.

As a result, the filing concluded, “It is now the view of the United States that WPATH Standards of Care lack scientific integrity and should not be relied upon.”

At the same time, the DOJ filed a new statement of interest in Fuller v. Georgia Dep’t. of Corrections, which reversed its previous position. Thi.s filing included the same argumentation found in the Doe filing, but added further legal arguments — in that sense, it was a fuller filing.

The added material in this filing argued that “Neither the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] nor the Eighth Amendment require state prisons to provide surgical interventions to inmates in response to a gender-dysphoria diagnosis.” It noted a specific exclusion in the ADA for “gender identity disorders not resulting from physical impairments,” which, when the ADA was passed in 1990, “would have been commonly understood to include gender dysphoria.”

The filing also cited legal precedents finding that “the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee the treatment of one’s choice,” which it argued “is especially relevant where, as here, courts have found a lack of medical consensus regarding whether cross-sex surgeries are medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria.”

“The prior administration’s arguments in transgender inmate cases were based on junk science,” insisted Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon. “States’ limited resources need not be wasted to provide these dubious surgeries to inmates.”

These filings are noteworthy for three reasons. First, they reverse the policy of the Biden administration that trans-identifying prisoners should have the right to obtain gender-transition procedures at taxpayer expense. As a presidential candidate, Kamala Harris supported this unpopular position in 2019, a fact that the Trump campaign drove home with a brutally effective ad in 2024.

Second, these filings highlight the rapid scientific and political developments that have taken place on the issue of gender transition procedures in recent years. WPATH’s credibility has cratered, while backtracking in Europe has exploded the illusion of consensus. Most recent legislation applied to whether gender transition procedures should be provided to minors, but the same points are also relevant to a discussion over whether these procedures of questionable benefit (not to mention questionable ethics) should be paid for by taxpayers.

Third, these filings accompany a dramatic shakeup at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which some bureaucratic veterans describe as a “bloodbath.” The division has radically shifted its focus to implementing Trump’s executive orders, such as “Keeping Men out of Women’s Sports” and “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” NBC News reported. Other priorities include “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism,” “Restoring Merit Based Opportunity,” “Designating English as the Official Language of the United States,” and the “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias” Task Force.

These changes have made the bureaucrats furious. “These documents appear to have been created in a vacuum completely divorced from reality. This is a 180 shift from the division’s traditional mission,” complained one.

“I was there almost 18 years, and what’s happening now is basically the opposite of what we’ve been doing,” said another.

While the bureaucrats may not realize it, these complaints only damn themselves. The Trump administration has adopted commonsense policies to protect civil rights at the very flashpoints that are most under assault today. Most Americans, upon hearing the name “Civil Rights Division,” must have assumed that these were the issues that the DOJ division was already monitoring. But now, the bureaucrats have publicly admitted that these priorities are exactly the opposite from what they have focused on for most of this century.

What were they focusing on instead? Based on the policies that made them angry, this government civil rights watchdog was probably promoting racist policies in the name of DEI or affirmative action or diluting real civil rights by attempting to manufacture new ones like a “right” of trans-identifying inmates to have taxpayers pay for their gender transition surgery.

Not every bureaucrat in the Civil Rights Division may have been on board with this woke agenda, nor should we assume that their every action was nefarious (their angry rants are likely hyperbole). But it seems apparent that this institution has long been captured by the progressive Left, and that over time the Left has made policy and staffing decisions in furtherance of its priorities.

It also seems apparent that the Trump administration has now snatched away the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and shaken it loose from years of progressive calcification. And that radical reform is already resulting in real policy changes.

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.