Chandler v. California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation

Lambda Legal, the ACLU of Southern California, the Transgender Law Center, and O’Melveny & Myers LLP filed a request to intervene in a federal lawsuit to defend SB 132, a groundbreaking California law protecting incarcerated transgender people. Lambda Legal filed the request on behalf of the TGI Justice Project and four incarcerated transgender women.

In 2020, the California legislature enacted SB 132, also known as the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act. This law protects transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people incarcerated in California prisons by requiring CDCR to place them in facilities according to their perception of personal safety, including by placing them in a facility consistent with their gender identity if they request.

A year later, in November 2021, the organization Woman II Woman and several individual cisgender women incarcerated in California prisons sued CDCR to challenge SB 132 and to dismantle the safeguards the law provides to transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people incarcerated in California detention facilities.

The purpose of the request to intervene is to defend SB 132 from this attack and to allow the voices of the trans people directly impacted by the law to be heard.