A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Tuesday from banning transgender people from serving in the military.
In a forcefully written opinion that rebuked the president’s effort, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes issued an injunction that allows trans troops to keep serving in the military, under rules that were established by the Biden administration, until their lawsuit against the Trump administration’s ban is decided.
“The ban at bottom invokes derogatory language to target a vulnerable group in violation of the Fifth Amendment,” Judge Reyes wrote.
According to the Defense Department, about 4,200 current service members, or about 0.2 percent of the military, are transgender. They include pilots, senior officers, nuclear technicians and Green Berets as well as rank-and-file soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Despite their relatively small numbers, they have been a disproportionate focus of the Trump administration.
In January, President Trump signed a caustically worded executive order saying that trans troops had afflicted the military with “radical gender ideology,” and that the “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
In February, the Defense Department issued new policies that included the same language, and said that all trans troops, regardless of merit, would be forced out of the military.
Several service members immediately sued, saying the policy amounted to illegal discrimination that violated their Constitutional right to equal protection under the law.
The military is still finalizing its plans for putting the ban into effect, and has not yet forced any trans troops out, though it has encouraged them to “voluntarily separate,” and has even offered payments to encourage their fast departure. The Navy has set a deadline of March 28 for trans sailors to request voluntary separation.
In the six weeks since Mr. Trump’s executive order was signed, troops say, they have been forced to use the pronouns and conform to the grooming standards of their birth sex, and have been denied medical care, passed over for assignments sent home from deployments and put on administrative leave.
“Their lives and careers are completely disrupted,” said Shannon Minter, a lawyer who represents the service members and is the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “That’s why getting them immediate relief is so important.”
Mr. Minter said Mr. Trump’s executive order was so loaded with illegal ill will — known in the legal world as animus — toward a specific group of people that he felt it was unlikely to survive the scrutiny of a federal court.
At a contentious hearing on March 12, Judge Reyes, who was appointed by President Biden in 2023, spent a full day firing questions at Justice Department lawyers who were defending the policy, and she often showed frustration with their responses
The judge went line by line through reports on transgender service members that the government had cited when the ban was issued, noting that data were years out of date and that the Defense Department’s conclusions were “totally, grossly misleading,” because they “cherry-picked one part, and misrepresented even that.”
The evidence presented was so thin, she said at one point, that the Defense Department might have well cited the latest Beyoncé album.
“How can you even say that — that a whole group of people lack humility?” the judge said to the government’s lawyers about one claimed justification for the ban. “It just makes no sense.”
One of the government lawyers, Jason Manion, argued in the hearing that federal law gives special leeway to the military to make decisions, and that it was not the court’s job to decide on the merit of the Defense Department’s evidence. “At the end of the day we are asking you to defer to military judgment,” Mr. Manion said.
“You keep assuming that judgment is embedded in this,” the judge responded. “The only judgment in this case, far as I can tell,” she said, is that the administration believed that transgender people lack integrity, humility, judgment and a warrior ethos.
The judge repeatedly hinted that the apparent lack of evidence that trans troops in the ranks had any negative effect suggested that the administration’s policy was driven by animus.
Mr. Manion argued that showing that animus influenced the policy would not be enough to justify finding it illegal. Citing a Supreme Court ruling that upheld President Trump’s 2017 executive order banning travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations, he said the order regarding trans troops would be illegal only if it were based solely on animus, and nothing else.
“Just having evidence of animus,” he said, “doesn’t get over the hump.”
Trans troops have already prevailed in court once against a similar order. Early in his first term in office, President Trump announced a transgender ban on Twitter, but the policy was quickly blocked by two federal judges.
The resulting injunction remained in place for two years, until a 2019 ruling by the Supreme Court allowed a reconfigured ban to take effect while the court considered the constitutionality of the policy. The case was dropped after President Joe Biden rescinded Mr. Trump’s ban in 2021, leaving unsettled the question of whether a ban on transgender service members would be constitutional.
The Trump administration’s latest effort is a remarkable departure from a 77-year trend in the military toward welcoming an increasingly diverse variety of Americans. Over that time, it was generally the White House that was pushing for more inclusion, and the military that was resisting. Now the roles have flipped.
Military leaders have repeatedly opposed the transgender ban.
The transgender order is part of a sweeping effort to roll back diversity efforts in the military. efforts that the Trump administration sees as counterproductive. The rollback has included firing some top military leaders, ending recognition of Gay Pride and Black History months, and purging content mentioning diversity and inclusion efforts from Defense Department websites — even removing a photo of the B-29 bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb, presumably because its name, Enola Gay, was flagged in a search for words the department wanted to scrub.
This week the Department of Veterans Affairs announced it would end gender affirming care for trans veterans.
“If veterans want to attempt to change their sex, they can do so on their own dime,” Doug Collins, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs said Monday.
Though the new injunction has spared trans service members from dismissal for now, many say it will be difficult to go on with their careers as if nothing had happened.
Sgt. First Class Julia Becraft, assigned to an Army armor battalion in Texas, was slated to be promoted to platoon leader this coming July, but since the ban was announced, the promotion has been put on hold.
She was so distraught over the president’s order that she decided to take vacation time to focus on her mental health, and has been attending therapy sessions.
“Everyone in my unit has been really supportive, but my world has been turned upside down,” she said.
Sergeant Becraft has served in the Army for 14 years, deployed to Afghanistan three times, and been awarded a Bronze Star. Now she faces being forced out of the service with no retirement benefits.
Even if she is ultimately allowed to stay, she said, the actions of the president have her wondering whether she can still commit to serving her country.
“It’s not just because they came after me and want me out,” she said. “It’s a culmination of all the other things they are doing: take down the D.E.I. efforts, firing of all these great leaders for no reason. I wish I could stay strong and fight, but, honestly, I’m just scared.”
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