Supreme Court allows Trump to begin enforcing ban on transgender military service members
DENVER, Colo. (KRDO) – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can begin enforcing a ban on transgender military service members – effective immediately.
The ruling lifts a lower court order that temporarily halted the ban's enforcement and grants a victory for President Donald Trump, who has pushed for a ban on transgender service members since his first term in office.
The court did not immediately explain its reasoning in the very brief ruling. The three liberal justices noted their dissent, but also provided no reasoning.
Under the new ban, “service members who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria will be processed for separation from military service,” according to a memo obtained by CNN.
The high court's decision means that the military can begin discharging service members who are transgender immediately, and can stop enlisting transgender individuals solely because of their gender identity.
According to ABC News, the Pentagon previously estimated that there are over 4,200 active service members with "a diagnosis of gender dysphoria," the military's metric for tracking its transgender troops. However, advocacy groups have put the number much higher, at around 15,000.
The new policy mirrors a previous ban on transgender service members rolled out during Trump's first term, which the Supreme Court allowed to take effect in 2019 before it was reversed by Biden shortly after he took office.
Just days after taking office for a second time back in January, President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender individuals from serving in the military.
In the order, titled "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness," Trump argued that any person in the military who expressed a “false ‘gender identity’” could not “satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The ban was challenged by a group of current and aspiring transgender service members, who argued that the ban violated their constitutional rights.
In a statement Tuesday, Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign, the groups who initially secured the preliminary injunction blocking the ban on behalf of the transgender service members, called the ruling "a devastating blow to transgender servicemembers."
"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," the groups said in the statement. "We remain steadfast in our belief that this ban violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and will ultimately be struck down.”
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