Supreme Court Sends Colorado Transgender Jail Case Back to the Tenth Circuit

On November 9, 2026, the Supreme Court vacated a Tenth Circuit ruling that revived Darlene Griffith’s challenge to her men’s-unit housing in Colorado’s El Paso County jail, sending the case back for reconsideration under West Virginia v. B.P.J. and United States v. Skrmetti without deciding the merits.

The order, in Roybal v. Griffith (No. 25-442), is the latest in a line of Supreme Court actions shaping how courts review government policies that treat transgender people differently, a history traced in our transgender history and education hub. It is a procedural step rather than a final ruling: the case goes back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which must look at it again under the Court’s two most recent equal protection decisions.

What did the Supreme Court order in Roybal v. Griffith?

The Court granted the sheriff’s petition, vacated the Tenth Circuit’s judgment, and remanded the case for further consideration. The entry appears under “summary dispositions” on the Court’s November 9, 2026 order list, which reads that the case is remanded “for further consideration in light of West Virginia v. B. P. J., 609 U. S. 958 (2026), and United States v. Skrmetti, 605 U. S. 495 (2025).”

This kind of order is often called a “GVR,” for grant, vacate, and remand. The Court issued no opinion, and no justice noted a dissent. A GVR does not decide who is right. It tells the lower court that the legal landscape has changed since it ruled and asks it to apply the newer precedent. The Tenth Circuit could reach the same result again or a different one.

According to the Supreme Court docket for No. 25-442, the justices considered the petition at their November 6 conference. SCOTUSblog listed the case among that week’s orders, describing it as “a transgender female inmate’s challenge to jail policies in El Paso County, Colorado.”

Who is Darlene Griffith, and what is the case about?

Darlene Griffith is a transgender woman who was held as a pretrial detainee in the El Paso County jail in 2020. Her lawyers told the Supreme Court she has been “living openly as a woman for over twenty years.” According to the sheriff’s petition for a writ of certiorari, Griffith had taken feminizing hormones and asked to be housed in a women’s unit. The jail declined, because it generally assigns housing based on genitals, and placed her in a men’s unit.

The petition summarizes her other allegations this way: because of the male housing assignment, she could not buy items such as lipstick, women’s underwear, and a sports bra from the commissary; at booking, a female deputy searched her above the waist, and a male deputy searched her below the waist; and she alleges the male deputy made inappropriate comments and that male deputies later conducted pat-down searches. These are allegations in a lawsuit. No court has found whether they are true.

Griffith sued in federal court in 2021, raising claims under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, including equal protection. A federal district court dismissed the case.

What did the Tenth Circuit decide before the Supreme Court stepped in?

A divided Tenth Circuit panel revived part of the case on February 19, 2025. Writing for the majority, Judge Veronica Rossman concluded, as reported by Colorado Public Radio, that “Ms. Griffith has stated a plausible Equal Protection claim.” The panel also allowed a claim about the strip search to go forward. Judge David Ebel joined the majority and wrote separately, describing “novel and difficult equal protection issues.” Judge Timothy Tymkovich dissented.

The ruling did not find the jail’s policies unconstitutional. It held only that the claims were plausible enough to survive a motion to dismiss. The sheriff’s office said at the time that it was “thankful that the 10th Circuit affirmed the dismissal of several of Ms. Griffith’s claims.” On June 10, 2025, the full Tenth Circuit declined to rehear the case, over a dissent by Judge Tymkovich joined by Judges Allison Eid and Joel Carson.

The panel’s equal protection analysis leaned on an earlier Tenth Circuit decision, Fowler v. Stitt. The sheriff’s petition notes that the Supreme Court had already vacated and remanded Fowler in 2025 after Skrmetti. Readers following prison and detention cases may also recall the Ninth Circuit’s ruling on housing transgender women in Oregon prisons, which raised related questions in a different circuit.

What did each side argue at the Supreme Court?

The sheriff and county officials, represented by Colorado Springs attorney Julian R. Ellis Jr., asked the Court to decide two questions. The first was whether a transgender inmate’s challenge to sex-based prison policies gets heightened scrutiny, or instead the more deferential standard from Turner v. Safley, which asks whether a policy is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. The second was whether limits on cross-gender strip searches conflict with the deference the Court described in Bell v. Wolfish and Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders. The petition said the courts of appeals were divided on the first question.

Griffith’s lawyers, led by Devi Rao of the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center, urged the Court to deny review. Their brief in opposition argued that the case was at an early stage, that the Tenth Circuit had decided only that the complaint cleared a low pleading bar, and that the sheriff had conceded below that intermediate scrutiny applied. The brief also stated: “Nothing about the decision below imperils prisons’ or jails’ abilities to segregate facilities based on sex.”

A group of states led by Kansas filed a brief supporting the sheriff. In June 2026, the Court asked the solicitor general for the federal government’s views, and the United States filed an amicus brief, signed by Solicitor General D. John Sauer, on September 25, 2026.

Why did the Court point to B.P.J. and Skrmetti?

Both decisions address how equal protection applies to laws and policies involving transgender people. In Skrmetti, decided in June 2025, the Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors. In West Virginia v. B.P.J., decided in June 2026, it upheld West Virginia’s law limiting girls’ and women’s school sports teams to students who are female at birth, a decision covered in our report on the Supreme Court upholding state bans on transgender athletes.

The order does not say how those decisions should apply to a jail housing policy. It only directs the Tenth Circuit to take them into account. How the appeals court reads them, including what level of scrutiny applies, will shape whether Griffith’s equal protection claim can proceed.

How have the parties and others responded?

Reaction so far has been limited. Complete Colorado reported on November 11 that the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to its request for comment. The same report quoted Beth Parlato, senior legal counsel for the Independent Women’s Law Center, a conservative group that supported the sheriff’s side: “Biological sex matters, especially in prisons, where the safety, privacy, and dignity of women are at stake.”

No public statement from Griffith or her attorneys about the November 9 order appeared in the coverage reviewed for this report. The arguments each side made in its Supreme Court briefs, summarized above, will now be taken up again in the Tenth Circuit.

What happens next?

The case returns to the Tenth Circuit, which will reconsider its 2025 decision. The court may ask the parties for new briefing. It could reinstate its earlier ruling with new reasoning, narrow it, or reverse it. If any claims survive, the case would then go back to the federal district court in Colorado, where the sheriff could present the jail’s justifications for its policies. For background on how detention and medical-care cases have moved through the courts this year, see our coverage of the federal prison hormone therapy order and the transgender rights FAQs in our Reference Library.

For now, the November 9 order does not decide whether El Paso County’s jail policies are lawful. It resets the case so the appeals court can apply the Supreme Court’s latest equal protection precedents.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did the Supreme Court do in Roybal v. Griffith?

On November 9, 2026, the Court granted the El Paso County sheriff’s petition, vacated the Tenth Circuit’s 2025 ruling for Darlene Griffith, and sent the case back for further consideration in light of West Virginia v. B.P.J. and United States v. Skrmetti.

Did the Supreme Court rule that the jail’s housing policy is constitutional?

No. The order was a grant, vacate and remand. It did not decide the merits, and the Court issued no opinion. The Tenth Circuit must now reconsider the case under the newer precedents.

Who is Darlene Griffith?

Darlene Griffith is a transgender woman who was held as a pretrial detainee in the El Paso County, Colorado, jail in 2020. She was housed in a men’s unit under a policy that generally assigns housing based on genitals, and she sued in federal court in 2021.

What did the Tenth Circuit decide in 2025?

On February 19, 2025, a divided panel revived Griffith’s equal protection claim and a claim over a strip search, holding they were plausible enough to proceed. It did not find the jail’s policies unconstitutional. The full court declined rehearing on June 10, 2025.

Why did the Court cite B.P.J. and Skrmetti?

Both are recent Supreme Court equal protection decisions involving transgender people. Skrmetti upheld Tennessee’s ban on certain care for minors in 2025, and B.P.J. upheld West Virginia’s school sports law in 2026. The Tenth Circuit must consider how they apply here.

Did any justice dissent from the order?

No dissent was noted on the Court’s November 9, 2026 order list, and the Court issued the order without an opinion.