The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Trump’s administration to begin enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military, undermining two lower court decisions and handing a victory to an administration that has broadly sought to restrict transgender rights.
The Justice Department asked the justices in an emergency application last month to lift a Seattle-area federal judge’s nationwide injunction blocking the policy, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put forward following an executive order Trump issued days into his second term.
The justices paused the injunction until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rules on the Trump administration’s appeal and the high court has the chance to consider whether to hear the case.
The court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented.
The Trump administration’s policy states that transgender individuals cannot meet the “rigorous standards” needed to serve, and allowing their participation threatens military readiness and unit cohesion, an argument long used to keep marginalized groups, including Black and gay people and women, from serving in the military. A 2016 RAND Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon found that allowing trans people to serve had no negative impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.
In a joint statement, Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, groups representing the transgender service members challenging Trump’s ban, called Tuesday’s ruling “a devastating blow” to trans troops “who have demonstrated their capabilities and commitment to our nation’s defense.”
“By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the Court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice,” the groups said.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in last month’s application to the Supreme Court that the policy is “materially indistinguishable” from the one Trump ordered during his first term, which the Supreme Court enabled him to enforce.
That policy banned transgender service members but made an exception for some who had already started to transition, in line with rules put in place during former President Obama’s administration. The new policy makes no such exception, deeming any service member with a current diagnosis, history or symptoms of gender dysphoria unfit for military service.
“The Department must ensure it is building ‘One Force’ without subgroups defined by anything other than ability or mission adherence. Efforts to split our troops along the lines of identity weaken our Force and make us vulnerable,” Hegseth wrote in a February memo to senior leadership at the Pentagon.
In the same memo, Hegseth ordered the Defense Department to pause gender-affirming medical care for trans service members. A federal judge later struck down Hegseth’s restrictions as unconstitutional, and the Pentagon resumed care last month.
U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle granted a preliminary injunction blocking Hegseth’s policy preventing transgender service members from openly serving from taking effect nationwide in March. He found that any hardship claimed by the government because of his ruling “pales in comparison” to those imposed on transgender service members and qualified accession candidates.
A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit declined to pause the injunction while the Trump administration appeals that decision, prompting the government’s emergency request to the justices.
In a separate lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes called Hegseth’s policy “soaked in animus” and also blocked it from taking effect nationwide. Another appeals court temporarily halted her order as it weighs whether to grant a longer pause.
Thirty-two transgender service members and recruits — plaintiffs in the separate challenge — wrote last week in an amicus brief that allowing the administration to enforce its ban on trans military service would cause transgender troops “reputational, professional, and constitutional harm that can never be undone.”
Responding to the administration’s application to the Supreme Court, attorneys for seven transgender active-duty members wrote last week that the new policy materially differs from the one Trump initiated in 2018, which “lacked the animus-laden language” of the new policy.
“An unprecedented degree of animus towards transgender people animates and permeates the Ban: it is based on the shocking proposition that transgender people do not exist,” they wrote. “Along with other recent executive orders targeting transgender people for opprobrium and discrimination, the Ban claims that having a gender identity that differs from one’s birth sex is a ‘falsehood’ or ‘false claim.’”
Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” states that adopting “a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
“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,” reads the order, one of several to deny the existence of trans, nonbinary and intersex people.
Other orders Trump issued during his first weeks in office aim to ban transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams and end federal support for gender-affirming care for children and teens up to 19 years old. An executive order issued on his first day back in office proclaims the government recognizes only two sexes, male and female, and broadly prevents federal spending on what Trump and his administration have called “gender ideology.”
