WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.
The court acted in the dispute over a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service and could lead to the expulsion of experienced, decorated officers.
The court’s three liberal justices said they would have kept the policy on hold.
Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president’s actions was 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, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that gives the military services 30 days to figure out how they will seek out and identify transgender service members to remove them from the force.
Three federal judges had ruled against the ban.
In the case the justices acted in Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington, had ruled for seven long-serving transgender military members who say that the ban is insulting and discriminatory and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations. A prospective service member also sued.
The individual service members who challenged the ban together have amassed more than 70 medals in 115 years of service, their lawyers wrote. The lead plaintiff is Emily Shilling, a Navy commander with nearly 20 years of service, including as a combat pilot who flew 60 missions in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned, Settle wrote. The judge is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush and is a former captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps.
Settle imposed a nationwide hold on the policy and a federal appeals court rejected the administration’s emergency plea. The Justice Department then turned to the Supreme Court.
The policy also has been blocked by a federal judge in the nation’s capital, but that ruling has been temporarily halted by a federal appeals court, which heard arguments last month. The three-judge panel, which includes two judges appointed by Trump during his first term, appeared to be in favor of the administration’s position.
In a more limited ruling, a judge in New Jersey also has barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair.
The LGBTQ rights group Lambda Legal called the high court order a devastating blow to dedicated and highly qualified service members.
"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. Transgender individuals meet the same standards and demonstrate the same values as all who serve. We remain steadfast in our belief that this ban violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and will ultimately be struck down,” the group said in a statement.
The federal appeals court in San Francisco will hear the administration's appeal in a process that will play out over several months at least. All the while, though, the transgender ban will remain in place under the Supreme Court order.
In 2016, during Barack Obama’s presidency, a Defense Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members, with an exception for some of those who had already started transitioning under more lenient rules that were in effect during Obama’s Democratic administration.
The Supreme Court allowed that ban to take effect. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.
The rules the Defense Department wants to enforce contain no exceptions.
The policy during Trump’s first term and the new one are “materially indistinguishable,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices, though lawyers for the service members who sued disagreed.
Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.
Mark Sherman, The Associated Press
