Two Federal Courts in One Day Block Trump’s Attempts to Ban Transgender Recruits and Service Members

Federal Courts Issue Strong and Stern Warnings to the Trump Administration 

Two federal courts Friday night issued rulings against President Donald Trump’s attempts to ban all transgender service members from the U.S. Military. In the first, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia denied the Trump administration’s emergency motion to block a court order requiring the Pentagon to begin accepting transgender recruits who sign up to join the nation’s armed forces. In the second ruling on Friday, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to discharge from the military existing service members simply because they are transgender.

These two rulings follow another ruling earlier this week, from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, that also blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to ban new transgender recruits. There are now a total of four federal courts that have blocked Trump’s attacks on transgender people who wish to serve their country in the U.S. Armed Forces.

As of now the Trump administration is blocked from discharging any service members because they are transgender, and is required to allow new transgender recruits to join starting January 1.

The D.C. Court of Appeals appeared to scold the Trump administration’s attorneys in its ruling. It reiterated the lower court’s previous ruling, which cited “the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered” by Trump’s August memo on transgender service members. It also used words like “unusual,” and “abrupt,” while repeating the lower court’s determination that Trump’s decision to ban new transgender service members “do not appear to be supported by any facts.”

It also called the Trump administration’s argument on why transgender service members should be banned was “flawed,” and noted that since “transgender people are already serving openly in the military,” it does not make sense to ban new ones.

Five different times it cites the Trump administration’s “failure” or says the administration’s arguments have “failed.”  

And it reminds the Trump administration that all the transgender plaintiffs who are suing “seek during this litigation is to serve their Nation with honor and dignity, volunteering to face extreme hardships, to endure lengthy deployments and separation from family and friends, and to willingly make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives if necessary to protect the Nation, the people of the United States, and the Constitution against all who would attack them.”

The California ruling blocks the Trump administration “from categorically excluding individuals…from military service on the basis that they are transgender.” 

“No current service member,” it orders, “may be separated, denied reenlistment, demoted, denied promotion, denied medically necessary treatment on a timely basis, or otherwise subjected to adverse treatment or differential terms of service on the basis that they are transgender.”

The order directing the administration to not deny medically necessary treatment is especially important.

“Four district courts have now ordered the military to allow transgender people to enlist and serve,” Jennifer Levi, Director of GLAD’s Transgender Rights Project, said in a statement issued by Equality California. “The military has put in place procedures to ensure the orderly processing of enlistment applications as of January 1. And transgender people continue to serve proudly and courageously across the globe. The case against President Trump’s ban on military service by transgender people is gaining momentum. There is no principled reason to prevent qualified transgender people, who wish to do so, from putting their lives on the line to defend our country.”

“This court saw the gravity of the issues at stake – for our plaintiffs, for our military, and for our national security,” Shannon Minter, NCLR’s Legal Director, also said in the statement. “Trump’s ban is a dangerous policy, which has wreaked havoc in the lives of transgender service members and the entire transgender community. Each court that rules against it brings us closer to a permanent end to this nightmare.”

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Image: DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro via Flickr

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