Zyst v. Miller

LGBTQ Rights, Prisoners' Rights
Location: Oregon
Court Type: Oregon Supreme Court
Status: Ongoing
Last Update: August 26, 2026

What's at Stake

Following the Oregon Department of Corrections’ unconstitutional treatment of a transgender prisoner, a habeas court ordered her removal from segregated housing, an individualized gender-affirming care assessment, a psychiatric evaluation, and identification of an appropriate cellmate. However, the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the psychiatric-evaluation and cellmate orders, finding them “too attenuated” to qualify as habeas relief. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, alongside the ACLU of Oregon, joined an amicus brief by the law firm Sugerman Dahab arguing that habeas courts have broad discretion to remedy violations and resulting harms. The brief explains that the Court of Appeals’ “close connection” test unduly constricts habeas relief, and which should be construed to encompass not only the need to halt ongoing constitutional violations, but also the need to mitigate various harms that may arise from those violations.

Summary

Petitioner Tara Zyst is a transgender prisoner who has been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and has attempted suicide nineteen times—eighteen of them in Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) custody. ODOC provided some gender-affirming treatment and housed Zyst in its maximum-custody segregation unit, while declining to provide an individualized assessment that both her psychiatrist and ODOC’s medical director agreed was medically necessary.

Zyst petitioned for habeas relief, alleging that ODOC violated state and federal constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment and unnecessary rigor. After a trial, the habeas court agreed and ordered a range of relief, including Zyst’s removal from segregated housing, an individualized gender-affirming care assessment, a psychiatric evaluation, and identification of an appropriate cellmate. However, while the Court of Appeals affirmed the constitutional violations, it reversed the psychiatric-evaluation and cellmate orders, arguing that those two pieces of the remedy were “too attenuated” from the violations to qualify as permissible habeas relief. Our brief urges the Oregon Supreme Court to adopt Zyst’s proposed rule—that a trial court exercising habeas jurisdiction abuses its discretion to craft relief only “if its orders are based on an erroneous legal conclusion or factual determinations not supported by the evidence, or if its orders are clearly against all reason and evidence”—and reverse the Court of Appeal’s decision.

First, the habeas statute expressly allows habeas courts to fashion relief broadly, according to the “law and justice of the case.” Habeas relief is available in conditions-of-confinement cases precisely because ordinary remedies are inadequate to reach them—a rationale that supports flexible, structured relief. And the equitable nature of habeas relief confirms that a habeas court’s remedial authority does not impose rigid, formalistic limits.

Second, the Court of Appeals’ conclusion—that psychiatric assessment and housing placement are severable from the violations it found—is not just an incorrect legal conclusion; it is empirically wrong. The trial court supportably found that psychological treatment and housing safety are critical elements of addressing gender dysphoria in custody, since when untreated, gender dysphoria predictably can lead to or exacerbate “depression, anxiety and self-harm and suicidality.”

Our brief urges the Court to hold that a habeas court’s remedial choices are broad and reviewed only for abuse of discretion and reverse the Court of Appeal’s decision insofar as it vacated the trial court’s psychiatric-evaluation and cellmate orders.

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