Lawyers argue whether transgender female prisoner should be transferred to women's jail

Lawyers in Federal Court in Halifax on Tuesday debated the case of a transgender female inmate who wants to be moved to a female facility.

At issue: Whether Amanda Joy Cooper, 58, can be transferred from Ontario’s Millhaven Institution, where Cooper is currently imprisoned, to a women’s prison in British Columbia, until a larger judicial review is settled.

Cooper has been incarcerated since 2001 and holds a dangerous offender designation, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) confirmed to National Post.

At a sentencing hearing in 2001, court heard how Cooper assaulted victims, including a girl as young as 12, only days after being released from prison for similar offences. Cooper’s actions were “so severe” that even while Cooper was in prison, psychiatrist Dr. Louis Morissette said he had to stand between Cooper and female workers, the Montreal Gazette reported at the time.

Cooper is currently incarcerated at Millhaven Institution, a men’s maximum security prison located west of Kingston, Ont.

In her submission, Cooper’s lawyer Emma Arnold noted that Cooper first requested an assessment for gender dysphoria in 2017 and received a diagnosis in 2020.

“At that time, she started living her life as a woman,” Arnold said, adding that in September 2024 Cooper “underwent top and bottom gender affirmation surgery that completed her physical transition.”

Arnold added: “Miss Cooper does not have a penis. She has the physical form of a female and the gender of a woman. Her sex and gender are aligned. (And) all of her correctional documents list her as being a female. So in fact, CSC and Miss Cooper are in total agreement, as far as all of the documents are concerned, about a very key fact in this case.”

Co-counsel Jessica Rose noted that CSC’s policy is to place inmates in a men’s or women’s institution according to their gender identity, but that in the case of health or safety concerns they should be placed according to their physical sex. “If somebody’s genitals aligns with their gender identity, then the analysis stops there,” she concluded.

Rose also noted that “Cooper has abundant reason to fear for her sexual safety (and) her physical safety within a men’s institution … where she’s the only female inmate in a common area with men.”

However, in her submission, lawyer Laura Rhodes, speaking on behalf of CSC, said Cooper’s transfer to Millhaven “ reflects bona fide justification and also the mandate for safety that CSC operates under.” (Cooper was transferred to Millhaven from New Brunswick’s Atlantic Institution in October.)

Rhodes added: “This applicant is a designated dangerous offender. She has a maximum security classification. (And) we know from the record (that) her victims have been very predominantly women.”

Rhodes said that as recently as a year ago Cooper was fixated on a female prison staff member “and had stated criminally action comments toward this person. So our submission is that this in itself is evidence that her transition has not mitigated the risk that she represents to women in particular, and that it’s a logical conclusion that her gender identity, hormone treatment and surgery have not fully mitigated her risk to re-offend against women.”

Rose countered that a female inmate with a history of targeting male victims would not be placed in a male prison “simply to remove them from accessing their target victim profile population. And of course, that sounds like an absurd proposition, but that is exactly what CSC is relying on, with respect to Miss Cooper, that she has a history of violence against women, and because of that, she cannot be placed in an institution for women. And this reasoning is clearly flawed.”

Federal Court Justice Love Saint-Fleur told the parties: “I’m going to try to render a decision very rapidly.” No date for that decision has been announced.

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