Supreme Court lets Trump ban transgender people from military service while litigation unfolds

The Supreme Court revived President Trump’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military, putting a lower court’s block of the president’s order on hold Tuesday.

The ban can remain in effect while the case challenging the policy winds its way through the lower courts, the justices said in a brief, unsigned order that did not reveal any reasons for the ruling.

“No more trans @ DoD,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on social media, celebrating the win.

LGBTQ groups that challenged the policy decried the halt as an insult to transgender troops who had been serving openly under a Biden administration policy.

“By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice,” Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation said.

The ruling is the latest in a series of orders from the high court in Mr. Trump’s favor, with the justices intervening to halt adverse lower court rulings and allow the president to carry out his policies while judges ponder the big legal issues.

Mr. Hegseth imposed the ban on Feb. 26, carrying out a Jan. 27 executive order from Mr. Trump that said transgender troops lacked the “requisite warrior ethos” to keep the military at top fighting condition.

The Defense Department policy disqualifies troops who have gender dysphoria or have undergone transgender medical interventions. People are allowed to serve if they do so under the sex they were born, the government said.

Troops disqualified under the new policy are to receive an honorable discharge.

Tuesday’s ruling is far from the final word.

It merely allows the policy to remain in place while lower courts continue to develop the record and rule on the weighty legal issues at stake.

Transgender troops were first allowed to serve in the Obama administration. That policy was reversed in the first Trump administration and then reimposed by the Biden team. Mr. Trump has revoked it again.

Tuesday’s case, United States of America v. Emily Shilling, stemmed from a case out of Seattle.

Judge Benjamin Settle had ruled that the Pentagon’s policy was irrational. He said there was no evidence that transgender troops were unable to serve honorably during the years they were allowed under President Biden.

“The government’s unrelenting reliance on deference to military judgment is unjustified in the absence of any evidence supporting ‘the military’s’ new judgment reflected in the Military Ban — in its equally considered and unquestionable judgment, that very same military had only the week before permitted active-duty plaintiffs (and some thousands of others) to serve openly,” the judge wrote.

Judge Ana Reyes, ruling in another case in the District of Columbia, went further in excoriating the administration.

She said the ban was “soaked in animus,” was “unabashedly demeaning” and “stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit.”

Both judges had issued broad orders halting Mr. Hegseth’s policy.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had put Judge Reyes’ decision on hold. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had allowed Judge Settle’s decision to stand, prompting the Trump administration to ask for the justices’ intervention.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the case covered issues that the justices saw when the Pentagon issued a similar though less expansive ban in the first Trump administration.

Then, as now, the Supreme Court stayed lower court blockades.

Mr. Sauer told the justices that the administration’s decisions on military matters deserve more deference than the lower courts showed.

“Indeed, if the separation of powers means anything, the government obviously suffers irreparable harm when an unelected judge usurps the role of the political branches in operating the nation’s armed forces,” Mr. Sauer told the high court.

The lead plaintiff in Tuesday’s case is Navy Cmdr. Emily Shilling, a pilot with nearly 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.