The US Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted President Donald Trump’s administration to implement his ban on transgender people in the military, allowing the armed forces to discharge the thousands of current transgender troops and reject new recruits while legal challenges play out.
The court granted the Justice Department’s request to lift a federal judge’s nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump’s prohibition on transgender service members. The Republican president’s directive was one of a series of steps he has taken to curb transgender rights.
The court’s brief order was unsigned, as is typical in emergency matters that come before it. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – publicly dissented from the decision.
Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle earlier found that Trump’s order likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.
Trump signed an executive order in January after returning to the presidency that reversed a policy implemented under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden that had allowed transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces. Biden said at the time that “America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride.”
Trump’s directive cast the gender identity of transgender people as a lie and asserted that they are unable to satisfy the standards needed for military service.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” Trump’s directive stated.
LGBT rights groups Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which are helping represent plaintiffs challenging the ban, called the Supreme Court’s decision a “devastating blow to transgender servicemembers who have demonstrated their capabilities and commitment to our nation’s defense.”
The court, they said, has “sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice.”
The court’s decision on Tuesday did not resolve the legal merits of the case. The litigation will continue in lower courts and could return to the justices in the future.
The Pentagon issued guidance to implement Trump’s executive order, disqualifying from military service current troops and applicants with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition steps. The guidance allowed people to be considered for a waiver on a case-by-case basis if their service would directly support “warfighting capabilities.”
Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.
A U.S. defense official has told Reuters that as of late last year there were 4,240 U.S. active-duty and National Guard transgender troops. Transgender rights advocates have given higher estimates.
