Transgender troops respond to Trump’s military restrictions
President Donald Trump has issued an executive order restricting transgender people in the military.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court will allow President Donald Trump to ban transgender people serving in the military and to take effect while court agenda continues.
In a victory over the president’s efforts to curb the rights of transgender people, the court agreed on Tuesday to demand administration assistance after a lower court suspended the ban.
The three liberal members of the court — judges of Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — said they rejected the request.
The Justice Department said the court inappropriately speculated the Pentagon’s assessment of the risks of transgender servicemen rather than giving “substantial respect” to the military.
The administration also argued that the policy was “substantially indistinguishable” from the partial ban that allowed the Supreme Court to be enacted during Trump’s first administration.
But trans service members challenging new policies said it was even more vast. For example, previous rules did not remove service members who had already migrated and did not reject healthcare.
Additionally, there is many years of experience showing that transgender service members are now improving military readiness and improving military readiness.
And they said the ban was “based on the shocking proposition that there are no trans people.”
The administration declared that there are only two genders, male and female, and that it cannot change a person’s gender.
Trump’s ban was suspended by a federal judge in March
The Trump ban was suspended on March 27 by a Seattle-based federal district judge. A panel of three judges from the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals supported the decision.
The Justice Department says it will force trans people to “harm military preparation and lethality.” US District Judge Benjamin Settle, appointed by former President George W. Bush, said there was no evidence to support it.
“The government’s argument is unconvincing and is not a particularly close issue with this record,” Settle said.
The judge says the ban is “immersed in the animus.”
A federal judge in Washington, DC reached a similar conclusion on March 18th on a related challenge by transgender members of the military. The order of US District Judge Ana Reyes temporarily blocks the enforcement of the policy while reviewed by the DC Court of Appeals.
Reyes, who said the ban would “spent on animus and drip on the pretext,” was appointed to the bench by former President Joe Biden.
The executive order, signed shortly after his inauguration, said it was “adopting gender identities that contradict individual sexual conflict with soldiers’ commitment to a lifestyle of honor, truth and discipline.”
To implement the order, the Pentagon has prepared to prohibit transgender people from joining the military, stop paying for some hormonal treatment and sexual allocation surgeries, and remove transgender military personnel from the ranks.
Estimates of the number of transgender forces vary from approximately 10,000 to 14,000 of nearly 2 million active and reserve forces. Approximately 1,000 people needed treatment. A Pentagon Power of Attorney study determined that allowing trans people to serve would have minimal cost and impact on the preparations for the military to fight.
