Supreme Court allows transgender military ban

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court will allow President Donald Trump’s partial ban on transgender people serving in the military to take effect while court challenges continue.

Responding to Justice Department requests, the high court Tuesday cleared away lower court actions that blocked the controversial policy from being implemented for nearly a year.

The court’s four liberal justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – said they would have continued to block the policy. They were overruled by the five conservative justices.

However, the court refused to hear the case this term, before the Trump administration fights its way through federal appeals courts. That will leave the legal questions surrounding the Pentagon’s policy unresolved for now.

The order represents a victory for the administration, which has railed against nationwide injunctions issued by local judges.

Similar injunctions have thwarted efforts to deport undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, as well as asylum-seekers who cross the border illegally.

The justices refused to hear the administration’s appeal in the transgender troops case, which means lower court challenges can proceed.

The high court’s action followed that ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It ruled that the policy had been fine-tuned by Pentagon officials over a period of months and no longer constituted a “blanket ban.”