The Supreme Court has permitted President Donald Trump’s administration to implement a ban on transgender personnel in the military, marking a series of directives to curtail transgender rights.
The court’s decision, made with a 6-3 conservative majority, granted the Justice Department’s request to lift a federal judge’s nationwide order that had blocked the military from enforcing Trump’s prohibition on transgender servicemembers as the policy undergoes legal challenges.
The big picture: The brief order from the Supreme Court, typical in emergency matters, was unsigned. However, the court’s three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – dissented publicly from the decision.
- The ban, signed by Trump in January after he returned to the presidency, reversed a policy instituted by former President Joe Biden that allowed transgender individuals to openly serve in the U.S. armed forces.
- Trump’s order portrayed the gender identity of transgender individuals as a falsehood and asserted they could not meet the required standards for military service, citing lack of humility and selflessness.
Go deeper: Following Trump’s directive, the Pentagon issued guidance to disqualify current troops and applicants with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition steps from military service, except on a case-by-case basis where warfighting capabilities were directly supported.
- Gender dysphoria, a clinical diagnosis indicating distress resulting from a mismatch between gender identity and assigned sex at birth, played a significant role in Trump’s ban.
- Despite a more limited restriction towards transgender military personnel in his first term, Trump’s actions reflect his continuous targeting of transgender rights through executive orders like recognizing only two sexes – male and female – as unchangeable.
- The lawsuit against the new ban was filed by active-duty transgender troops, a transgender man seeking to enlist, and a civil rights group, leading to a decision by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle to block the policy.
- The Justice Department argued that the judge’s injunction interfered with the executive branch’s authority, led by Trump, to determine military service eligibility and military judgments, claiming support for the Department of Defense’s professional military assessments.
What we’re watching: The Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling on a major transgender rights case is expected by the end of June, following arguments about a Tennessee ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors in December.
