A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from banning transgender people from serving in the military, ruling that the plan violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
A federal judge in Washington on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from banning transgender people from serving in the military, ruling that the plan violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
Judge Ana C. Reyes issued the preliminary injunction, barring the Defense Department from enacting a new policy that would have moved to remove transgender troops from the ranks. The policy, issued last month, followed a January executive order signed by President Donald Trump that referred to being transgender as a “falsehood” inconsistent with the “humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
Reyes, who was appointed by former president Joe Biden, wrote that such pronouncements that transgender people are not honorable, truthful or disciplined are “pure conjecture.” The executive order and Defense Department policy “provide nothing to support Defendants’ view that transgender military service is inconsistent with military readiness,” she wrote.
“Plaintiffs face a violation of their constitutional rights, which constitutes irreparable harm. Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” Reyes wrote, adding that “avoiding constitutional violations is always in the public interest.”
The Defense Department referred questions to the Justice Department, which could not be immediately reached for comment.
Jennifer Levi, GLAD Law’s senior director of transgender and queer rights, said the ruling “lay bare how this ban specifically targets and undermines our courageous service members who have committed themselves to defending our nation.”
“Given the Court’s clear-eyed assessment, we are confident this ruling will stand strong on appeal,” Levi said.
Eight people, including six service members and two people trying to join the military, sued the government in January, challenging the legality of Trump’s order. A dozen more people, including nine on active duty, have since joined the suit. The legal challenge is one of several trans people and their allies have filed against Trump as he has signed a flurry of directives aimed at rolling back LGBTQ+ rights.
The plaintiffs in this case are “so relieved,” said Shannon Minter, the legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which argued the case with GLAD Law. “They’ve been under so much pressure, almost an unbearable amount of stress. This gives them a moment to breathe. They so much want to continue their military careers and continue serving. It’s their whole lives. They’ve sacrificed. Their families have sacrificed. The uncertainty has been wearing on them.”
The Pentagon memo, made public in late February as part of the lawsuit, said troops who have gender dysphoria or a history of it would be separated, marking a reversal of previous policy that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. The memo said exceptions could be made for transgender troops who directly support “warfighting capabilities” if the Defense Department has a “compelling” reason to retain them.
Each military branch was directed to identify service members with gender dysphoria within 30 days and to “begin separation actions” within 30 days after that.
None of the plaintiffs have been separated as part of the policy, but they wrote in court documents that the ban has affected them in a variety of ways. One transgender woman, a staff sergeant serving with U.S. Army Special Forces, said she was removed from a deployment to a combat zone this month. She was sent home to Kentucky and was told she would be separated by April 26, court records state. Her unit is now operating with one medic, she wrote, a reduction that “severely impacts the readiness and mission” of the team.
“A ban on transgender service has forced an abrupt and involuntary end to a career I love, tarnishing my record of honorable service and jeopardizing my future,” the soldier wrote. “My wish is simply to remain in the Army, continue deploying with my unit, and fulfill my responsibilities to my country and fellow soldiers.”
Other plaintiffs wrote in court documents that they were put on administrative leave, had their contracts canceled or were forbidden to graduate Officer Candidate School. Spokespeople for each of the four branches declined to comment about whether any transgender service members have been let go.
Openly transgender people have been allowed to serve in the military since 2016, when the Obama administration repealed a ban on transgender service, citing the value of ensuring that all qualified individuals were able to serve their country in uniform. Previously, the military considered transgender people to be unfit for service.
Since then, fewer than 6,000 active-duty or reserve service members have had a gender dysphoria diagnosis, according to a senior defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Trump administration. Roughly half of those have taken hormones, and 1,000 have pursued transition surgery. The military has spent $52 million total since 2014 on therapy, hormones and surgery costs for trans service members, according to court documents. Reyes wrote that in 2023, the Defense Department spent about $41 million for Viagra, compared with an estimated $5.2 million for gender affirming care.
In a hearing last week, Justice Department lawyer Jason Manion argued that the Pentagon’s new policy enforces “a disqualification based on a medical condition.” In a memo, the DOJ pointed to a 2021 study that found that 40 percent of transgender service members were non-deployable over a 24-month period.
But Reyes described that figure as “meaningless” because the government did not note what percent of the overall force was non-deployable during that period, nor did they note how long trans service members remained non-deployable. Reyes also said she read the study and found that it concluded that transgender service members were more deployable and had fewer lapses in service than other troops diagnosed with depression. They also stayed in the military longer, the study found.
Reyes noted that former defense secretary Lloyd Austin used the same study to determine trans people are fit for service as long as they have 36 months of stability following a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
Though Reyes was at times pointed in her critique of the government’s arguments, last week’s hearing was tame compared with a previous proceeding, which at times turned fiery. In a February hearing, Reyes described Trump’s order as “biologically inaccurate” and said it was motivated by “unadulterated animus” toward transgender people. Though Reyes complimented the DOJ lawyer several times during that two-day hearing, the department later filed a complaint with the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit and accused Reyes of “hostile and egregious misconduct.”
Reyes did not address the complaint during last week’s hearing and instead asked a wide range of questions that drew on everything from Newtonian physics to John Rawls’s “Veil of Ignorance” theory. While the DOJ lawyer said at times that he either had not recently read the full studies cited in his memo or did not have them with him at the hearing, Reyes said she had studied them in full and repeatedly said the government was mischaracterizing its own evidence.
Reyes said she was being especially thorough because the plaintiffs are asking her to do something “no one should take lightly.”
“You’re asking me to enjoin the president of the United States and the secretary of defense,” Reyes said. “And I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that unless I was assured that that was the right approach. And I personally can’t be assured of that unless I’m asking all these questions.”
On Tuesday, Reyes noted that Trump issued the executive order barring transgender people from the military a week after he returned to office. Past policies affecting transgender troops were “adopted after careful study and review,” she said.
“No one knows what he relied on, if anything,” Reyes said of Trump.
The judge gave the Defense Department until March 21 to inform each military branch of the ruling.
