Trump asks Supreme Court for ban on transgender servicemembers from military
On Thursday morning, the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to let it enforce a Department of Defense policy that prohibits transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. Military after 2025. On March 27, U.S. district judge Benjamin Settle banned the government from enforcing the policy anywhere in the United States. U.S. The justices told the lawyers representing the challengers that they must file their response before Thursday, May 1, 5 p.m. On Jan. 20, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that revoked a previous order by then-President Joe Biden which allowed transgender military personnel to serve openly. Trump then issued an order requiring Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth implement a ban against “individuals with a gender dysphoria”. This is psychological distress caused by conflict between the sex assigned to someone at birth and their gender identity. In February, the Department of Defense released a policy that disqualifies anyone with gender dysphoria, or who has undergone medical treatment to treat gender dysphoria, from serving in the military. The plaintiffs include seven members of the military who are all transgender and one transgender person wishing to join the military. Commander Emily Shilling is the lead plaintiff. She has been a Navy test-pilot for 19 years and a naval aviator since that time. She claims that the Navy spent $20 million for her training. She began her transition in the fall 2021. The plaintiffs challenged the policy in federal court, arguing (amongst other things) that it violated the Constitution’s guarantee for equal protection.
Settle agreed, calling the policy a ‘de facto blanket ban on transgender services.’
The U.S. Court of Appeals of the 9th Circuit refused to hold the district court order while the government appealed. Sauer, arguing that Settle’s order had taken away the executive branch’s “authority to decide who can serve in the Nation’s Armed Forces,” asked the justices on Thursday to put Settle’s order on hold until the litigation is resolved in the court of appellations and (if needed) the Supreme Court. Sauer emphasized that an expert panel concluded during the first Trump Administration that allowing individuals who have gender dysphoria in the armed services would be “contrary” to “military efficacy and lethality.” And although the Supreme Court had made it clear that “professional military judgements about the composition the armed force should be given “great deference,” Sauer stressed, Settle nevertheless barred the government to implement the 2025 policy anywhere within the United States. The policy, Sauer explained to me, makes distinctions based more on a medical condition called gender dysphoria and the treatments that are related to it, than gender identity. It is subject to the least strict constitutional test known as rational basis review. It can easily meet this standard: According to Sauer, the government “has undisputedly significant interests in maintaining military preparedness, cohesion and good order, as well managing the military’s cost” – and that the policy is rationally linked to achieving these interests.
Sauer also continued to argue that the Supreme Court allowed the first Trump Administration to enforce a policy in 2019 which was “materially similar” to the one in question. Sauer said that they also “cause significant damage to the government”, by, for instance, encouraging forum-shopping, and forcing the government to appeal every decision against it. “At minimum,” Sauer concluded, the Supreme Court should narrow the scope of Settle’s order so that it “blocks the implementation of the 2025 policy only as to the eight individual respondents in this case.”
Posted in Emergency appeals and applications, Featured
Cases: United States v. Shilling
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Amy Howe
Trump asks Supreme Court for ban on transgender servicemembers from military
SCOTUSblog
(Apr. 24, 2025, 2:21 PM),
