A US appeals court on Friday declined to block the administration of President Donald Trump from transferring 18 transgender women in federal custody to men’s prisons, but gave a federal judge — who had earlier found the move unconstitutional — another opportunity to review the matter.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit said the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ decision last year to transfer the women, in line with an executive order issued by Trump, was “the product of deliberate, individualised determinations rather than happenstance”.

US District Judge Royce Lamberth had temporarily blocked the transfers last year, ruling that housing transgender women in men’s prisons violated their constitutional rights by placing them at substantial risk of harm.