Trans inmate’s transfer to women’s prison delayed while NC officials appeal ruling
A court order requiring North Carolina prison officials to move transgender inmate Ashlee Inscoe to a women’s prison has been temporarily put on hold, after officials said they would appeal the judge’s ruling.
Wake County Superior Court Judge A. Graham Shirley granted the N.C. Department of Adult Correction a temporary stay on Tuesday, the day of a deadline he had imposed last month for officials to transfer Inscoe to one of the state’s women’s prisons. His latest order pushes back the deadline until a hearing on DAC’s motion for a longer-term stay is held.
A three-hour-long hearing on Nov. 21 had resulted in Shirley siding with Inscoe, a transgender woman currently imprisoned at Nash Correctional Institution, about 45 miles east of Raleigh, and giving DAC 14 days to move Inscoe to a women’s prison.
Inscoe, who first asked to be moved to a women’s prison more than three years ago, filed her lawsuit against prison officials in September 2021.
Ruling in favor of Inscoe on Nov. 21, Shirley said that a “straight, statutory interpretation” of state law meant that Inscoe, who had her birth certificate updated in May to list her sex as female, must be housed with other women inmates.
Inscoe, who has been in and out of prison for most of her adult life, has alleged that she’s faced regular harassment and mistreatment since she was most recently incarcerated in 2017. In September 2022, after months of requesting surgery to correct a painful, life-threatening situation, prison officials allowed Inscoe to have an orchiectomy.
On Friday, with Tuesday’s deadline to transfer Inscoe approaching, prison officials said in court filings that they were appealing Shirley’s ruling to the N.C. Court of Appeals. They also submitted an 11-page motion to stay, asking that the court delay the deadline until the appeals court, or the N.C. Supreme Court, had weighed in.
The order Shirley issued Tuesday pushes back the deadline to move Inscoe until Dec. 18, or until the court holds a hearing on DAC’s motion to stay.
“Ashlee experiences sexual harassment and the risk of sexual violence every day she is housed in men’s prison,” Elizabeth Simpson, an attorney for Inscoe, said in a statement. “It is past time to house her with other women, as is required by state law.”
Inscoe, who attended the Nov. 21 hearing in Raleigh and was emotional after the judge ordered DAC officials to transfer her, told The News & Observer the next day that she was relieved to secure a move out of the men’s prison, after years of fighting for it.
“It just seems like every time that I got to one barrier and tried to cross it, as soon as I got across, there was another one,” Inscoe said, reflecting on how long it had taken to reach that point.
In their motion for a stay, DAC officials said that the department has “sole discretionary authority” under state law to manage prison administration, including “inherently discretionary” decisions about prison transfers.
They also challenged Inscoe’s assertion that she has two X chromosomes, telling the court that the department was unable to obtain medical records to confirm that, and that additional karyotype testing wasn’t conducted because Inscoe said she was uncomfortable with DAC conducting the test.
The motion also mentions a 2000 conviction on Inscoe’s record for indecent liberties with a 13-year-old, when she was 18, for which she had to register as a sex offender, and questions the reliability of her accounts of experiencing sexual harassment at a previous prison.
Taking all of that into account, officials told the court they have “serious security concerns” about Inscoe being housed with other women.
This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 5:47 PM.
