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In June, the Washington State Supreme Court heard oral arguments on whether 38-year-old Amber Kim could be transferred from a men’s prison to the state’s sole women’s prison, where she had been housed for three years. “I feel like I’m in the universe’s waiting room,” Kim told Truthout.

Kim had spent 15 years in the state’s men’s jails and prisons. Then, in 2021, the state’s department of corrections approved Kim’s transfer to the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW).

Three years later, in 2024, Kim was issued a disciplinary ticket for allegedly engaging in consensual sex with her girlfriend, a cisgender woman. (Sex, even consensual sex, is against prison rules.) The other woman also received an infraction but remained at WCCW even though, at the time, the state had another women’s prison, Mission Creek. That prison closed in October 2025 as a cost-cutting measure.

That was the only infraction for sexual activity that Kim received. Nonetheless, she was placed in segregation for three months, then transferred to the men’s Monroe Correctional Complex. There, she was placed in the intensive management unit, where she has remained in segregation for 23 hours each day.

In December 2024, the ACLU of Washington filed a personal restraint petition on Kim’s behalf arguing that her transfer violated the state constitution’s prohibition on cruel punishment. The state’s appellate court denied her petition last year. On June 23, 2026, the state’s supreme court heard oral arguments.

Even When Trans Women Win Transfers to Women’s Prisons, They Still Aren’t Safe

Three months earlier, in April 2026, anti-trans organizations filed a lawsuit against the state’s prison system on behalf of a cisgender woman at WCCW who alleged that she was attacked by a trans person who was transferred there. In May, the U.S. Department of Justice announced plans to conduct a civil rights investigation into the Washington State Department of Corrections’ practices of placing trans women at WCCW.

Washington State Department of Corrections spokesperson Chris Wright told The Washington State Standard that roughly 347 of the nearly 13,000 people in the state’s prison system identify as transgender or nonbinary. WCCW houses 20 transgender women. In court, Emma Grunberg of the state attorney general’s office stated that the Twin Rivers Unit at Monroe Correctional Complex, a general population housing unit, has 18 trans women and 16 nonbinary people. It also houses men convicted of sex offenses and gang activity. That is where the department would transfer Kim, she told the court.

“Staff Didn’t Do Anything”

Thirty-three-year-old Tegan Kamile knows the harassment and hazards of being a trans woman in Monroe’s general population.

In 2019, Kamile applied for a transfer to WCCW. She was denied because of several minor infractions (or rule violations), such as being out of bounds (in a place where she was not authorized to be). She was told that she needed to be infraction-free for at least six months.

“I offered to do six months in closed custody to show them how I am [not........

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