Supreme Court vacates ruling in favor of male inmate denied placement in women’s prison

November 10, 2026

The United States Supreme Court has vacated a ruling in favor of a male inmate who identifies as a woman and wanted to be housed with female inmates in a Colorado jail.

The Christian Post reports the court vacated a decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sheriff Roybal et al. v. Darlene Griffith, in an orders list released Monday morning.

The high court sent the case back to the 10th Circuit “for further consideration in light of” its decisions in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and United States v. Skrmetti.

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that states can prohibit males who identify as females from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.

In the case of United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court ruled last year that Tennessee could enforce a law banning body-mutilating surgeries and hormone drugs for trans-identified minors.

According to the Christian Post, Griffith, a man who has identified as female for about 20 years, was put in the male population at El Paso County Jail in 2020 as a pretrial detainee, despite requesting to be housed with the female population.

Griffith filed a complaint claiming that authorities violated the Fourteenth Amendment by housing him in an all-male unit, subjecting him to an allegedly abusive cross-gender strip search, and denying him various products available to female inmates.

In February 2025, a three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit ruled 2-1 to revive Griffith’s lawsuit, reversing a lower court ruling against the inmate.

Judge Veronica Rossman wrote the majority opinion, which sent the case back to the district court to consider some of Griffith’s claims.

Rossman wrote that “we cannot say the particular sex-based classifications at issue in this case serve important government objectives through means substantially related to those objectives.”

Judge Timothy Tymkovich wrote a dissenting opinion, arguing that “sex is a biological fact” and that sex-based segregation in jails is constitutional.

Photo: top, Credit: Unsplash/Matthew Ansley