Federal Judge Rules Trump Administration Must Accept Transgender Military Recruits

Status Quo Effectively Reinstated

A federal judge has just granted a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration, ordering the Pentagon to accept transgender military recruits starting January 1. The ruling also effectively destroys President Trump’s July 26 tweets in which he claimed he was instituting a total ban on all transgender service members, and a subsequent executive order about two months later in which he directs the Secretary of Defense to decide which trans service members should be discharged. 

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling is a clarification of a ruling from late October. Today the court makes clear “that the effect of its order was to revert to the status quo” before the Trump memo/executive order was signed. In other words, the Dept. of Defense is instructed to go back to the way things were before Trump got involved. 

BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner notes: “The Trump administration already has said it is appealing the injunction from US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in DC, which was issued in October.”

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