United States President, Donald Trump’s effort to ban transgender people from the military service has proved abortive as a High Court in Washington DC blocked the enforcement.
The ruling came as part of Talbott vs. Trump, a lawsuit filed on Jan. 28 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups Glad Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights on behalf of six active duty transgender service members.
The court ruled that Trump’s administration’s order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights and marginalized people’s rights to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment.
In a 79-page decision, U.S. District Judge, Ana Reyes, blocked the Trump administration from enacting the policy and offered a scathing rebuke of the Pentagon’s development of the policy.
“The court knows this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes. We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect,” she said.
Anticipating the new administration’s appeal, Reyes delayed her decision from taking effect until Friday so the Department of Justice could ask a higher court to stay her order.
In response to this, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a statement, vowed to appeal the ruling saying, we are appealing this decision, and we will win.
Similarly, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, posted about the ruling on social media, writing, “District court judges have now decided they are in command of the Armed Forces…is there no end to this madness?”
On Jan. 27, the president signed an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.
In response to the order, Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies people with gender dysphoria from military service. Gender dysphoria is the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.
