The US Supreme Court on Tuesday permitted Donald Trump’s administration to implement his ban on transgender personnel in the military, one of a series of directives by the Republican US president to curb transgender rights.
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In a decision that could trigger the discharge of thousands of current personnel, the court granted the Justice Department’s request to lift a federal judge’s nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump’s prohibition on transgender servicemembers while a legal challenge to the policy plays out.
The court’s brief order was unsigned, as is typical in emergency matters that come before it. The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Its three liberal justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – publicly dissented from the decision.
Seattle-based US District Judge Benjamin Settle found that Trump’s order likely violates the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment right to equal protection under the law. The Supreme Court did not rule on the legal merits of the case. The litigation will continue in lower courts and could return to the justices in the future.
Trump signed an executive order in January after returning to the presidency that reversed a policy implemented under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden that had allowed transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces. Biden said at the time that “America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride”.
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Trump’s directive cast the gender identity of transgender people as a lie and asserted that they are unable to satisfy the standards needed for service in the American armed forces.