Nicholas Roske, the would-be assassin of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh who now identifies as a woman, has been assigned to Federal Medical Center (FMC) Fort Worth, a detention center the Biden administration turned into a “transgender” medical intervention facility, offering inmates taxpayer-funded “gender reassignment” surgeries.
Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, shirked the federal guidelines for sentencing Roske, who now goes by “Sophie.” Those recommend 30 years to life in prison. Instead, Boardman gave him only eight years.
Boardman persistently referred to Roske, a male, with female pronouns. She added, “I take into consideration the conditions of pre-trial confinement and the fact that she [sic] is a transgender woman and will be sent to a male-only [Bureau of Prisons] facility.”
FMC Fort Worth is a male-only facility. Its sister facility for females, FMC Carswell, is also in the Fort Worth, Texas, area.
FMC Fort Worth is designed to care for inmates with “complex medical considerations,” a Biden administration spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) said. It is a Care Level 4 facility. The BOP defines that as involving conditions in which an inmate is “severely impaired and may require daily nursing care. Examples of such conditions are those with cancer in active treatment, dialysis, quadriplegia, stroke or head injury patients, major surgical patients, acute psychiatric illness requiring inpatient treatment, and high-risk pregnancy.”
Roske has filed letters to the court discussing his transgender ideation, and the BOP considers his identification as “transgender” a “psychiatric condition.” He is also about 30 years old, and only started identifying as female in September 2025, as far as court documents show, about a month before he was sentenced.
FMCs Fort Worth and Carswell were the male and female prisons where the Biden administration launched a comprehensive, taxpayer-funded transgender surgery program for convicted criminals.
“The Federal Bureau of Prisons is pursuing a contract for gender-affirming surgery in Texas, as the Dallas-Fort Worth area is home to both male and female Federal Medical Centers,” a Biden administration spokeswoman told The Dallas Express in 2024. “This will allow us to provide specialized and comprehensive care at a facility already equipped to care for individuals with complex medical considerations.”
When President Donald Trump took office, he signed an executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” banning “transgender medical interventions” within the federal prison system. Two subsequent BOP memos implemented the order. One banned federal funds from paying for “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Federal Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., blocked the executive order and both memos from being implemented across all BOP facilities in June 2025. He stated the Trump administration is “enjoined from enforcing Executive Order 14168 as applied to medical hormone therapy and social accommodations for people in the custody of the BOP and from enforcing the BOP’s memoranda implementing Executive Order 14168, and … shall provide and continue providing Plaintiffs and members of the class gender-affirming hormone therapy and social accommodations in accordance with BOP policy and practice in effect immediately prior to Defendant Trump’s issuance of Executive Order 14168 on January 20, 2025.”
In February 2026, the BOP published the “Management of Inmates with Gender Dysphoria” policy. It blocked “transgender” surgeries and hormone therapies for inmates who had not already had such interventions, and created a tapering plan for those who had been on transgender drugs prior to the policy, subject to medical approval on a case-by-case basis. Complications from surgeries already completed would also be treated under the policy.
However, a memo from Elisa Mason, who is general counsel for the BOP, essentially preempted the enforcement of that policy based on Lamberth’s injunction, claiming it only covers “hormones and social accommodations.”
While that case, Kingdom v. Trump, mentions surgeries in the complaint, the injunction does not. It is therefore unclear if surgeries stopped, pursuant to the executive order. But it appears that cross-sex hormone replacement is still going on.
BOP declined to comment on the matter. Spokesman Emery Nelson told The Federalist, “For privacy, safety, and security reasons, the Federal Bureau of Prisons does not comment on matters related to pending litigation or ongoing legal proceedings.” Under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), it is impossible to know what sorts of treatment which inmates receive, and Roske’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment from The Federalist.
Roske’s placement in FMC Fort Worth raises even more questions, particularly since such placement also disregards BOP sentencing preferences. In the October 2025 sentencing, Boardman initially recommended that Roske be sent to Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terminal Island, a facility in the Los Angeles area that was shut down in June 2026.
FCI Terminal Island made sense because Roske is from just outside of Los Angeles, and sentencing generally follows the “500 mile policy.” That part of the 2018 First Step Act states inmates should “to the extent practicable” be placed in a prison within 500 driving miles from their release residence. Factors such as “medical and mental health care levels” are part of the consideration as to whether to place inmates in a facility outside that distance.
Even if that policy were not followed, it might make the most sense to have Roske serve out his time at a facility close to where his crime was committed, which is Maryland. Applying the 500-mile logic to California or Maryland would not land an inmate in Texas — but it would if that inmate were receiving some form of Care Level 4-type medical treatment.
The Trump administration is appealing Roske’s short sentence, and there are impeachment proceedings filed against Boardman in the House of Representatives.
