Supreme Court Throws Out Ruling That Revived Transgender Detainee's Challenge to Colorado Jail Policies
The Supreme Court on Monday threw out an appeals court ruling that had allowed a transgender detainee's challenge to a Colorado jail's policies to move forward.
The justices ordered the lower court to take another look at the case in light of the Court's recent rulings on girls' school sports and medical treatment for minors.
The case, Roybal v. Griffith, involves how the El Paso County Jail assigned housing, handled commissary requests and conducted searches.
Darlene Griffith, a transgender woman who is biologically male, was held at the jail as a pretrial detainee in 2020. Griffith had lived as a woman for more than 20 years and asked to be placed in a female housing unit.
READ MORE: Supreme Court Lets Trump Resume Border Barrier Construction in Texas' Big Bend Region
What the Lawsuit Claimed
According to the complaint, jail staff instead placed Griffith in a male unit under a policy that assigns detainees based on their anatomy. Griffith also alleged that officials refused access to lipstick and female underwear that were available to female detainees.
The federal lawsuit challenged the housing and commissary decisions under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, arguing the jail treated detainees differently based on sex without a good enough reason. It also challenged how staff carried out a strip search, a separate set of claims.
A federal district court dismissed the claims, but a divided panel of the Tenth Circuit revived several of them in February 2025. The appeals court applied heightened scrutiny to the housing and commissary policies and found Griffith had plausibly alleged unequal treatment.
That ruling let the equal protection claim against the sheriff in his official capacity go forward. The panel kept the dismissal of claims against officials personally because the law was unsettled at the time, but revived some strip search claims, including an allegation that a deputy carried it out in an abusive way.
Trump Administration Backed the County
Sheriff Joseph Roybal and other county officials asked the Supreme Court to step in after the Tenth Circuit refused to rehear the case in June 2025. They argued that jail administrators need room to make decisions about housing and other practices, and that courts should give weight to safety and management concerns.
Griffith's lawyers countered that heightened review already lets courts account for the realities of running a jail, while still requiring officials to justify policies that treat male and female detainees differently.
READ MORE: Supreme Court Signals It May Limit Inmate Lawsuits Against Federal Prison Officials
The Trump administration sided with the county in a brief filed by Solicitor General John Sauer. Sauer argued that governments may apply a constitutionally justified sex classification consistently to biological males and females, and that the Constitution does not require individual exemptions from such policies. He pointed to laws governing women's and girls' sports as one example.
Back to the Tenth Circuit
The Supreme Court directed the Tenth Circuit to reconsider the case under West Virginia v. B.P.J. and United States v. Skrmetti. The written order listed no dissent.
In June, the Court upheld West Virginia's law reserving girls' and women's school sports teams for biological females, finding it consistent with Title IX. In Skrmetti, the Court upheld a Tennessee law restricting certain medical treatments for transgender minors against an equal protection challenge.
Monday's order vacated the appeals court's judgment and sent the dispute back for further review. A separate fight over federal prisons is also before the Court. On Oct. 21, the justices left in place a lower court order blocking immediate enforcement of new federal prison restrictions that would halt surgeries, taper hormone therapy and end certain accommodations. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have let the administration enforce them while the case continues.