A federal district judge on March 18 temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s ban on transgender troops in response to a lawsuit filed by two LGBTQ legal groups on behalf of a half-dozen transgender service members.
“The military ban is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” wrote Judge Ana Reyes of the US District Court for the District of Columbia. “Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact. Thus, even if the Court analyzed the military ban under rational basis review, it would fail.”
The preliminary injunction, which applies nationwide, comes nearly two months after GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a federal lawsuit on equal protection grounds challenging the Trump administration’s ban on trans troops. In addition to six active service members, the lawsuit was also filed on behalf of two individuals seeking to join the military — and 12 others have joined the case since then, according to GLAD law.
Reyes concluded that the policy violates equal protection by discriminating on the basis of transgender status and sex. However, she delayed the order until March 21 to give time for the federal government to appeal the decision, according to the Associated Press.
“Defendants must show that the discriminatory military ban is in some way substantially related to the achievement of those objectives,” Reyes wrote. “And they must do so without relying on ‘overbroad generalizations about the different talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females,'” citing the 1998 case US v. Virginia.
Trump announced the ban in an executive order and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo on Feb. 7 stipulating that “all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused,” which he said was “effective immediately.” However, according to the New York Times, the military has yet to force out any trans troops but has encouraged them to “voluntarily separate” and sought to speed that process up by offering payments to them.
In the meantime, existing trans troops have been forced to use the pronoun assigned to them at birth and have been cut off from medical care or promotions and have been sent home from deployments or put on leave, according to the Times.
GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights previously took legal action when the President Donald Trump banned transgender troops during his first term. That policy was subsequently reversed by President Joe Biden.
“The court acted quickly today to shield our troops from the harmful effects of this irrational ban,” Shannon Minter, NCLR’s legal director, said in a written statement. “It would have ended careers of dedicated transgender service members and created personnel gaps, leaving others to fill critical roles. The ban’s harmful impact and rushed implementation show that it was motivated by prejudice. Our plaintiffs include lifelong military personnel who served in combat in Afghanistan, come from multi-generation military families, and have received honors like the Bronze Star. This ban is unjustifiable and attacks brave service members, recruits, and families who sacrifice so much for our country.”
In issuing the ruling, Reyes underscored the dedication of service members who have put their lives on the line for the country.
“Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender service members have sacrificed — some risking their lives —to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the military ban seeks to deny them,” Reyes wrote. “The court’s opinion is long, but its premise is simple. In the self-evident truth that ‘all people are created equal,’ all means all. Nothing more. And certainly nothing less.”
