The Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to allow its ban on transgender service members in the military to proceed.

The emergency application to the high court follows multiple rulings by lower courts thwarting the administration’s efforts to purge transgender service members from the armed forces.   

Related

Senators demand to know if Pete Hegseth is defying court orders blocking the trans military ban
“Fox News television personalities—not military units —are the ones bothered by transgender people faithfully serving their country.”

In an indication of the mounting disarray surrounding the policy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon, the Defense Department also announced Thursday it will resume gender-affirming care for transgender service members, according to a memo obtained by POLITICO.  

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

The memo says the Defense Department is returning to the Biden-era medical policy for trans service members based on a court order striking down Hegseth’s healthcare restrictions as unconstitutional. A federal appeals court in California denied the department’s effort to halt the policy while its challenge is pending.

On his first day in office, Trump revoked an executive order by President Biden that overturned Trump’s original trans military ban, which the Supreme Court allowed to take effect in 2019 while multiple cases challenging it made their way through the courts.

A decision on the constitutionality of the ban was not reached before Biden scrapped it when he took office in 2021.

Trump then issued a new Executive Order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” that claims the identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.

Hegseth, a longtime critic of transgender service members in the military, was ordered to plan for their removal.

Multiple court cases challenging those plans followed, resulting in the injunctions.

Thursday’s application to the high court by Solicitor General D. John Sauer claimed that the latest order blocking the ban, issued Tuesday by a federal appeals court, means the ban could not take effect for many months, “a period 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.”

Sauer wrote that the court should allow the ban to take effect nationwide, with exceptions for the eight plaintiffs covered in the appeals court ruling.

Lawyers representing those plaintiffs, in a case filed by Lambda Legal in Washington State, were given a week by the Supreme Court to respond to the administration’s request.

In that case, U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma, Washington wrote that the Trump administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have served openly over the past four years with no evident effect on military readiness, should suddenly be banned.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.