Supreme Court allows Trump administration to enforce transgender military ban

The US Supreme Court has permitted the Trump administration to implement a controversial ban on transgender people from serving in the military while ongoing legal battles continue in lower courts.

In a 5-4 ruling released Tuesday, the justices allowed the administration’s motion to lift a nationwide injunction issued by a lower court that had previously held back the policy.

The decision gives the administration a temporary green light to enforce restrictions against transgender service members, despite ongoing litigation continues challenging the ban’s constitutionality. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson objected, saying that they would have denied the motion.

TRUMP REVERSES BIDEN-ERA POLICY

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.”

According to the order, individuals who identify with a gender different from their biological sex “conflict with a soldier’s commitment to an honourable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honour this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” Trump’s directive stated.

The Pentagon later issued guidance to implement Trump’s 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.”

During his first term as president, Trump also took aim at transgender military personnel with a more limited restriction. The Supreme Court in 2019 allowed the Defence Department to enforce Trump’s transgender military prohibition that had let certain personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria after entering the military to continue to serve.

The lawsuit against the new policy was filed by seven active-duty transgender troops, a transgender man seeking to enlist and a civil rights advocacy group.

Settle blocked Trump’s policy, calling it “unsupported, dramatic and facially unfair,” and saying that the administration had provided no evidence of any harm that had resulted from the inclusion of transgender people in the armed services.

With inputs from Reuters

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