President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow enforcement of a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.
Without an order from the nation’s highest court, the ban could not take effect for many months, Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote, “a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the nation’s interests.”
The high court filing follows a brief order from a federal appeals court that kept in place a court order blocking the policy nationwide.
At the least, Sauer wrote, the court should allow the ban to take effect nationwide, except for the seven service members and one aspiring member of the military who sued.
The court gave lawyers for the service members challenging the ban a week to respond.
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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 presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.
But in March, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, 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.
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.
In 2016, during Barack Obama’s presidency, a Defense Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members, with an exception for some of those who had already started transitioning under more lenient rules that were in effect during Obama’s Democratic administration.
The Supreme Court allowed that ban to take effect. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.
The rules the Defense Department wants to enforce contain no exceptions.
Sauer said the policy during Trump’s first term and the one that has been blocked are “materially indistinguishable.”
Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.
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 on Tuesday. 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.
Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
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