Trump asks US Supreme Court to enforce transgender military ban

President Donald Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to allow implementation of his executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military, one of a series of directives by the Republican president to curb transgender rights.

The Justice Department in a filing requested that the court lift Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle's nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump's prohibition on transgender service members while a legal challenge to the policy proceeds. Settle found that Trump's order likely violates the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.

The judge's injunction "cannot be squared with the substantial deference that the (Department of Defense's) professional military judgments are owed," the Justice Department said in the filing.

Legal challenges

In the case before Settle, seven active-duty transgender troops, a transgender man seeking to enlist and a civil rights advocacy group sued over the ban. The Supreme Court directed the plaintiffs to file a response to the administration's request by May 1.

Trump in January signed an executive order that 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.

"A man's assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member," Trump's order stated.

The directive reversed a policy implemented under Trump's Democratic predecessor Joe Biden to allow transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces.

The Pentagon later issued guidance to implement Trump's order, disqualifying from military service current troops and applicants with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition steps. The guidance allowed people to be considered for a waiver on a case-by-case basis if their service would directly support "warfighting capabilities."

Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person's gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.

The Defense Department has "rationally determined that service by individuals with gender dysphoria would undermine military effectiveness and lethality consistent with similar, longstanding determinations for a wide range of other medical conditions" such as asthma and hypertension, the Justice Department's filing on Thursday stated.

Ongoing political tensions

The Supreme Court previously weighed in on Trump's targeting of transgender troops during his first term in office, allowing the Defense Department in 2019 to enforce a more limited restriction that had allowed certain personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria after entering the military to continue to serve.

In blocking Trump's current ban, Settle called it an "unsupported, dramatic and facially unfair exclusionary policy" and that the administration had provided no evidence of any harm that had resulted from transgender individuals' presence in the armed services.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined the administration's request to put Settle's order on hold pending an appeal.

In a separate case, Washington, D.C.-based U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes also issued a nationwide injunction blocking Trump's ban while that litigation proceeds. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has placed that injunction temporarily on hold.

Trump has targeted the rights of transgender Americans in a series of executive orders including one stating that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that they are "not changeable."

Trump also signed an order to end federal funding or support for healthcare that aids the transition of transgender youth and another one attempting to exclude transgender girls and women from female sports.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in an unrelated case involving transgender rights by the end of June - a challenge to a Republican-backed ban in Tennessee on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.