The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.
The court acted in the dispute over a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.
The court’s three liberal justices said they would have kept the policy on hold.
Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president’s actions was an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.
In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that gives the military services 30 days to figure out how they will seek out and identify transgender service members to remove them from the force.
Three federal judges had ruled against the ban.
In the case the justices acted in Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, had ruled for several long-serving transgender military members who say that the ban is insulting and discriminatory and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations.
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The Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned, Settle wrote. The judge is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and is a former captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps.
Settle imposed a nationwide hold on the policy and a federal appeals court rejected the administration’s emergency plea. The Justice Department then turned to the Supreme Court.
The policy also has been blocked by a federal judge in the nation’s capital, but that ruling has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court, which heard arguments last month. The three-judge panel, which includes two judges appointed by Trump during his first term, appeared to be in favor of the administration’s position.
In a more limited ruling, a judge in New Jersey also has barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair.
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