Transgender ban
Supreme Court asked to take up ruling on military
The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to expedite a ruling on challenges to orders that ban transgender people from serving in the military.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday once again asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual legal process to take on another controversial issue — President Donald Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from military service.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked the justices to consolidate the challenges to the ban — which have been successful in lower courts — and rule on the issue in its current term.
The challenges are to the administration’s order that would prohibit transgender men and women from enlisting, possibly subject current service members to discharge and deny certain medical care. The order reverses an Obama administration policy allowing transgender men and women to serve openly and to receive funding for sex-reassignment surgery.
Federal judges have prohibited the Trump order from being implemented.
Trump in July 2017 surprised military leaders and members of Congress when he abruptly announced the proposed ban in several tweets. In announcing the change, Trump said he was “doing the military a great favor” by “coming out and just saying it.”
Challengers have used such statements to argue that the directive is the result of discrimination rather than a study of how allowing transgender personnel affects the military, and lower court judges largely have agreed.
“There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all,” U.S. District Judge Colleen KollarKotelly wrote in a case filed in the District of Columbia. “In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear an appeal of the ruling next month.
The Trump administration has taken an aggressive posture when lower courts have ruled against it on important issues. It has asked the Supreme Court — with varying degrees of success — to accept the cases before they have run through the normal appeals process.
“Under Trump, the Justice Department has shown little respect to judges who rule against it — or who don’t rule for it quickly enough,” Joshua Matz, a lawyer who filed an amicus brief on behalf of the transgender ban, wrote in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post.