WASHINGTON—In a major victory for the White House, the Supreme Court sided Tuesday with President Donald Trump’s administration, lifting a lower court’s order pausing the ban on trans-identifying troops in the military from going into effect.
The High Court granted the Trump administration’s application for a stay on Tuesday afternoon, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting. The decision allows Trump’s order to proceed, at least for the time being.
The Trump administration had asked the Supreme Court in late April to allow the Pentagon to enforce its ban on troops who suffer from gender dysphoria or have undergone transgender medical treatments after two federal judges blocked the administration from removing troops who identify as transgender.
Those judges had ruled that the Trump order is probably unconstitutional and motivated by discrimination rather than negative impacts on the military, though the Defense Department’s policy is based on findings during the first Trump administration showing that individuals with gender dysphoria impact “military effectiveness and lethality,” as the appeal states.
Service members who undergo so-called transition surgeries can take a minimum of 12 months to recover, often using heavy narcotics during this time, and are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements, the White House has said. They also require consistent medical care, which is not conducive to deployment or other readiness requirements.
Trump’s executive order on transgender troops not only bans military members from using taxpayer dollars to get gender transition surgeries, but also prohibits males from using or sharing sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities that are designated for females. The order rescinds President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14004, which allowed for all sorts of accommodations of gender identity in the military, and opened wide the door for gender ideology and taxpayer-funded transgender interventions within military ranks.
Trump also issued an executive order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” which banned individuals with gender dysphoria from entering the military. Gender dysphoria is a psychological condition wherein a man might believe he is actually a woman, or a woman might believe she is actually a man.
