The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration may begin enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military while the case continues working its way through lower courts.
The ruling granted the administration’s emergency request to lift a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order, so it did not lay out the justices’ reasoning and will remain in place only until the issue is decided in lower courts. The Court’s three liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented but did not provide their reasoning.
The ban was issued via executive order on Trump’s first day in office and revokes a Biden-era rule that allowed transgender people to serve openly in the military. A second executive order issued a week later stated 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.”
“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the administration said in announcing the policy. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”
The Defense Department executed Trump’s order in February, segregating locker rooms and other sensitive areas in military facilities by sex and ordering officials in each of the branches to begin making plans to discharge transgender service members, among other measures.
Seven service members, including a naval aviator of 19 years, sued the administration over the policy with the support of two advocacy groups.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a devastating blow to transgender service members who have demonstrated their capabilities and commitment to our nation’s defense,” Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign Foundation, two groups representing the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement.
The policy “has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice,” the groups added.
Judge Benjamin Settle of the Federal District Court in Washington state issued a nationwide injunction blocking the policy in March. One plaintiff, Commander Emily Shilling, has been an officer for 19 years and began transitioning genders in 2021. Settle said in the injunction that “there is no claim and no evidence that she is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service.”
“There is no claim and no evidence that Shilling herself is dishonest or selfish, or that she lacks humility or integrity,” Judge Settle, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, wrote. “Yet absent an injunction, she will be promptly discharged solely because she is transgender.”
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit would not freeze Settle’s order while the matter was being adjudicated, prompting the administration to file an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court. Trump’s administration argued that the period of time it would take to adjudicate the issue without the Supreme Court pausing Settle’s order was “far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the Nation’s interests.”
Recent data suggest that as few as 1 percent of active-duty service members identify as transgender. In 2016, 8,980 active duty and 5,727 reservists identified as transgender, according to analysis of a Pentagon study done by the think-tank the Palm Center.