Supreme Court lets Trump’s ban on transgender military service take effect

A federal judge had blocked reversal of Biden policy, saying the government provided no evidence that trans people undermined armed forces.

The Supreme Court order on transgender people serving in the military was unsigned and provided no reasoning. Picture: AFP

The Supreme Court reinstated the Trump administration’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, setting aside a federal judge’s finding that the blanket exclusion violated the Constitution’s equal-protection guarantee.

The court’s order Tuesday allows the administration to begin discharging transgender service members and deny enlistment to new ones while litigation over the ban proceeds in the lower courts.

As is typical in emergency matters, the order was unsigned and provided no reasoning.

Three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson—dissented.

A federal court in Tacoma, Washington, found that the government provided virtually no justification for reversing a Biden-era policy that, for the first time, allowed transgender persons to serve openly in the military.

In a brief seeking the high court’s intervention, Solicitor General John Sauer argued that the Defence Department had “rationally determined that service by individuals with gender dysphoria would undermine military effectiveness and lethality—consistent with similar, longstanding determinations for a wide range of other medical conditions (such as asthma and hypertension).”

Wall Street Journal