On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order from banning transgender people from joining or serving in the military.
US District Judge Ana Reyes ruled that the ban violates the Equality Protection Clause, as van discriminates based on his transgender status and gender.
Reyes said the ban was “immersed in animus.”
“The language is surprisingly sleazy, its policy accusing trans people of inherently ineligible, and its conclusions have nothing to do with facts,” she wrote.
Reyes said, “In fact, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender soldiers have sacrificed putting their lives at risk in order to ensure that others have a very equal protection that the ban seeks to deny them.”
Reyes delayed the impact of her interim injunction until Friday, giving administrators time to sue them. She added her turn that the government could have “created a policy that would “balance the national needs for equal protections between prepared military forces and Americans.”
“They can still,” she said. “But the ban on military lies not that policy. Therefore, the courts must act to maintain the equal protection that the military defends every day.”
The White House and the Department of Justice did not immediately return requests for comment.
Shannon Minter, the head of the Legal Affairs Department at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, represents several trans service members and trans people who wish to participate in the lawsuit, saying Reyes acted immediately “to protect the military from the harmful effects of this irrational prohibition.”
“The harmful effects of the ban and the hasty implementation show that it is motivated by bias,” Minter said. “Our plaintiffs include lifelong servicemen who fought in Afghanistan, come from multi-generational military families and have received honors like Bronze Stars.
Trump’s orders go far beyond similar policies he issued during his first term. This has banned trans people from continuing those who have already served in a way that is consistent with their gender identity and receive transition-related health care if they came out before the ban. Service members who came out subsequently were not permitted to receive such medical care and had to continue serving in a manner consistent with the gender assigned at birth.
The new policy prohibits trans people from enlisting, and requires the military to identify all trans service members “indicating the current diagnosis or history of gender violations,” according to the gospels filed in the lawsuit last week by Yotegon, which is the medical term for the medical distress of serious emotional distress caused by false tidying between gender identity and birth sex.
Anything identified by the Pentagon will be disqualified from the service and must be removed from work. According to the memo, they will receive an honorable separation unless their records are specifically reflected.
In January, two national LGBTQ legal agencies, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (Glad Law) and NCLR, filed a lawsuit against Trump’s executive order on behalf of six active trans service members and two trans people seeking enlistment. They argued that the ban discriminates against trans people and “reflects hostility towards trans people because of their transgender status.”
The order declared that trans “is at odds with the soldier’s commitment to an honorable, true, and disciplined lifestyle, even in personal life.”
“It is a man’s claim that he is a woman, and his requirement for others to respect this falsehood is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order states.
Reyes pushed Justice Department Jason C. Lynch in that language at a preliminary hearing last month, repeatedly asking if he believed it had shown anise to the trans community.
“Do you agree that exclusion of groups of people from military service based on unsupported claims that they are liars, attitudes, lacking integrity, undisciplined and dishonorable is animated by the Animus, especially if there is no support in any of those claims?” Reyes asked Lynch. Lynch refused to answer.
Additionally, multiple Department of Defense memos say enlisted service members should use pronouns and salutes such as Sir or Ma’am, which are consistent with birth sex. Reyes pushed Lynch over how the use of pronouns affects military preparation.
“I won’t-,” Lynch said before the judge suspended him.
“That’s not,” Reyes said. “Because a rational person with common sense understands that it’s not.”
