A group that opposes diversity, equity, and inclusion programs sued the Washington State Deparment of Corrections, challenging its policy of housing transgender female inmates in the state’s womens’ prison.
Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism alleges prisons designed for females, like the Washington Corrections Center for Women, aren’t equipped or staffed to address the security threats created by inmates assigned male at birth, says the lawsuit filed Monday in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington. The group is represented by the America First Policy Institute, an advocacy group staffed with Trump allies,
They allege the policy violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments, in part by showing “deliberate indifference” to female inmates’ health and safety, as well as the equal protection clause.
Co-plaintiff Faith Booher-Smith says she was attacked by an inmate named Christopher Williams at WCCW. The suit claims Williams is a six-foot-four, “‘biologically intact’ male” and convicted child sex offender who transferred to WCCW after “self-identifying as a woman.”
“In the prison setting, where inmates cannot escape state-imposed conditions, females are forced to live every waking moment at a dangerous disadvantage,” the suit says.
Physical and sexual assaults and harassment are a “foreseeable consequence” of the housing policy, and result from being deprived of the right to serve their sentences in a sex-segregated facility, the suit alleges.
The US Bureau of Prisons is currently involved in litigation surrounding a 2025 executive order mandating federal prisons recognize only a person’s gender assigned at birth.
The Washington State Corrections Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carney Badley Spellman PS also represents the plaintiffs.
The case is Found. Against Intolerance & Racism Inc. v. Wash. Dept. of Corrections, W.D. Wash., No. 2:26-cv-01419, complaint 4/27/26.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story: