The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to let it start enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military that has been blocked by lower courts.
The administration’s emergency application was the latest in a series of requests asking the justices to pause decisions by trial judges that prevent it from moving forward with the blitz of executive orders Mr. Trump has signed. The Supreme Court has allowed some initiatives to proceed and temporarily blocked others, issuing orders that have for the most part been technical and tentative.
The new case concerns an order issued on the first day of Mr. Trump’s second term. It revoked an executive order from President Joseph R. Biden Jr. that had let transgender service members serve openly.
A week later, Mr. Trump issued a second order saying that expressing what it called a false “gender identity” conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,” and that requiring others to recognize a “falsehood is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
In February, the Defense Department implemented Mr. Trump’s order, issuing a new policy requiring all transgender troops to be forced out of the military. According to the Defense Department, about 4,200 current service members, or about 0.2 percent of the military, are transgender.
Service members sued to block the policy, saying it ran afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
In March, Judge Benjamin H. Settle, of the Federal District Court in Tacoma, Wash., agreed, issuing a nationwide injunction blocking the ban.
The government had failed to show that the ban “is substantially related to achieving unit cohesion, good order or discipline,” wrote Judge Settle, who was appointed by President George W. Bush. “Although the court gives deference to military decision making, it would be an abdication to ignore the government’s flat failure to address plaintiffs’ uncontroverted evidence that years of open transgender service promoted these objectives.”
The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit refused to block Judge Settle’s ruling while it considered the administration’s appeal.
The administration then sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, saying that “the district court’s injunction cannot be squared with the substantial deference that the department’s professional military judgments are owed.”
At a minimum, the government’s application said, the Supreme Court should limit Judge Settle’s ruling to the plaintiffs in the case and lift the balance of the nationwide injunction.
The court told the plaintiffs to file their brief opposing the ban on May 1, and the justices will probably rule on the government’s application not long after.
Judge Settle’s ruling followed a similar one from Judge Ana C. Reyes of the Federal District Court in Washington. “The law does not demand that the court rubber-stamp illogical judgments based on conjecture,” wrote Judge Reyes, who was appointed by Mr. Biden.
The District of Columbia Circuit entered an “administrative stay,” saying the brief pause “should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits.” That court is expected to rule shortly on the government’s request that it block Judge Reyes’s ruling while the appeal proceeds.
Early in his first term, President Trump announced a transgender ban on Twitter, but the policy was blocked by two federal judges.
Those injunctions were lifted by the Supreme Court in 2019 by a 5-to-4 vote, allowing a revised ban to take effect while legal challenges moved forward. The cases were dropped after Mr. Biden rescinded the ban.
In its application on Thursday, the administration said the policy blocked by the justices in 2019 was materially identical to the new one and urged them to rule the same way now.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
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