By Prism member Rev. Dr. Justin Sabia-Tanis, to the Public Safety Policy and Finance Committee of the MN House of Representatives on February 25, 2025.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I come before you as a pastor and a seminary professor in Christian Ethics. For many years, I have studied violence and discrimination experienced by the transgender community. Based on that knowledge, I am deeply opposed to this bill.

Multiple studies confirm that incarcerated transgender people experience sexual and physical assault from fellow inmates and prison staff at rates 5-6 times that of non-transgender inmates.¹ Transgender women are the victims of these assaults, not the perpetrators. In a 2015 study, 18% of transgender inmates reported physical assault and 20% sexual assault, many times
repeatedly.² Another study put the rate as high as 59% compared to 4.4% of non-transgender prisoners.³ Rape leads to lasting trauma and exposes people to disease, including HIV.⁴

The courts have been clear that subjecting people to assault, rape, and disease is not an acceptable consequence of incarceration. Moreover, it is immoral to knowingly expose prisoners to these dangers, which is precisely what this bill would do.

One respondent to a study I co-authored commented, “I was arrested one day regarding something minor. Due to my gender being marked as male, I was put in with the men. Within 15 minutes, I was raped by 3 different men. My mother even called and warned the officers NOT to put me in with [the] general population as I would be an easy target. When I got out I tried to
seek help from Victims Services but was denied. I was also discouraged from trying to press charges on the men.”⁵ This is precisely the type of harm that results from prioritizing biology-at-birth alone when it comes to determining inmate placement.

I am well aware that it is popular right now to target transgender people. Yet one of your responsibilities as lawmakers is to ensure that our society does not follow mob rule, but protects those who are in the minority. Because the right to live our lives according to our own conscience is part of what it means to be free people. Transgender people share that right along with every other Minnesotan.

To deliberately subject transgender women to additional and unnecessary suffering diminishes the moral standing of our state and is an ethical violation that serves no purpose. Please vote against this bill.

1. Megan Robertson, “Improper Housing and Inadequate Medical Treatment for Transgender Prisoners,” The Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law XXIV, no. 1 (2022). ↩︎
2. S. E. James et al., “The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey” (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Transgender Equality, 2016), 190. ↩︎
3. Nora Neus, “Trans Women Are Still Incarcerated with Men and It’s Putting Their Lives at Risk,” CNN, June 23, 2021. ↩︎
4. Robertson, “Improper Housing”. ↩︎
5. Jaime Grant et al., “Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey” (Washington, D.C: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,
   2011), 168. ↩︎