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AMERICANALMANAC (Alex Tanzer) - Trump administration asks Supreme Court to enforce transgender military ban during ongoing lawsuit Sat Aug 29 16:42:15 2026

The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to let the Pentagon discharge transgender service members who sued over the ban, a move that could settle whether the commander in chief or federal judges control military personnel decisions. The administration's filing targets a divided D.C. Circuit ruling that blocked the government from removing transgender troops […] The post Trump administration asks Supreme Court to enforce transgender military ban during ongoing lawsuit appeared first on American Almanac .

The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to let the Pentagon discharge transgender service members who sued over the ban, a move that could settle whether the commander in chief or federal judges control military personnel decisions. The administration's filing targets a divided D.C. Circuit ruling that blocked the government from removing transgender troops who are plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States. That June decision found the service members were likely to succeed on their claim that the Pentagon's policy amounts to unconstitutional discrimination. The administration wants the justices to step in now, before a full trial on the merits ever takes place. At stake is a straightforward question with broad implications: can a president set the terms of who serves in the armed forces, or can lower courts override that authority based on equal-protection arguments the Supreme Court has never resolved in this context? Trump's January 2025 order set the policy in motion President Trump signed an executive order in January 2025 declaring that transgender identity was incompatible with the standards he wanted the military to uphold. The order listed those standards explicitly: "readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity and integrity." It directed the Pentagon to build policies that would exclude transgender individuals from service. The Pentagon followed through. Its implementing policy generally required the separation of service members "with a current diagnosis or history of, or symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria" and imposed restrictions on anyone who had undergone or expressed an intent to undergo gender transition. The department also barred transgender individuals from enlisting. A group of transgender service members challenged the policy in federal court in Washington. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes issued a preliminary injunction blocking the administration from enforcing the ban against those specific plaintiffs, service members the D.C. Circuit later noted had served honorably and met the military's own performance requirements. A divided D.C. Circuit sided with the plaintiffs in June A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld Judge Reyes's injunction in a divided ruling. The majority found that the challengers were likely to succeed on their claim that the administration's policy unlawfully discriminated against transgender service members. It concluded that the government had not adequately justified its treatment of transgender troops under the constitutional standards governing equal protection. The ruling was narrow in one respect. It did not impose a blanket nationwide injunction covering every transgender person in uniform. It applied only to the plaintiffs before the court, the service members who had filed suit. But the legal reasoning carried broader weight. If the D.C. Circuit's equal-protection analysis holds, it would cast doubt on the entire policy framework the Pentagon built after Trump's executive order. That is exactly the outcome the administration wants the Supreme Court to prevent. Justice Department argues courts overstepped presidential authority In its Supreme Court filing , the administration framed the dispute as a separation-of-powers problem. The Justice Department argued that the lower court improperly interfered with the president's authority over the armed forces. Decisions about military personnel and readiness, the filing contended, deserve substantial judicial deference, not second-guessing by appellate judges applying civilian equal-protection frameworks to a military context. The administration's core position is that the policy rests on military readiness, unit cohesion, and other considerations squarely within the commander in chief's constitutional authority. The filing asks the Supreme Court to reverse the D.C. Circuit and allow enforcement of the ban against the plaintiffs while the underlying constitutional challenge works its way through the courts. It also asks the justices to take up the dispute before the case proceeds to a full trial on the policy's constitutionality, a signal that the administration views the D.C. Circuit's reasoning as a threat that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. Plaintiffs' attorneys say the policy threatens honorable careers The National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD, the legal organizations representing the plaintiffs, have argued that the policy violates constitutional protections and threatens the careers of service members who have met every standard the military sets. The D.C. Circuit's own opinion noted that the plaintiffs included current troops with records of honorable service and satisfactory performance evaluations, people who, by the military's own metrics, were doing their jobs. That detail matters. The administration's argument rests on readiness and cohesion, but the plaintiffs the government wants to discharge are service members the military itself rated as meeting its requirements. The gap between the policy's stated rationale and the individual records of the people it targets is the tension the courts have struggled to resolve. Supreme Court has allowed enforcement before, but never ruled on the merits The justices are not encountering this issue for the first time. The Supreme Court previously allowed the Trump administration to enforce a transgender military policy during earlier litigation. But the Court has never issued a final ruling on whether a ban of this kind passes constitutional muster. The current filing asks the justices to intervene again at the preliminary-injunction stage, well before a trial court has weighed the full factual record. Several significant questions remain unanswered. The exact number of plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States has not been publicly detailed. The vote breakdown on the D.C. Circuit panel, widely assumed to be 2, 1 given the description of a "divided" ruling, has not been specified in available reporting. And no timeline has been set for a full trial on the policy's constitutionality, leaving the legal landscape in limbo for every transgender service member beyond the named plaintiffs. The Supreme Court must now decide whether to grant the administration's request. If it does, the plaintiffs could face discharge while their constitutional claims remain unresolved. If it declines, the D.C. Circuit's reasoning stands, at least for now, and the case proceeds toward trial with the injunction intact. Presidents have broad authority over who serves in the military, and courts have historically been reluctant to override that judgment. If the judiciary can block a commander in chief's personnel decisions based on equal-protection theories the Supreme Court has never endorsed in a military context, the precedent reaches far beyond this case, and every future president will govern the armed forces with a federal judge looking over each shoulder. The post Trump administration asks Supreme Court to enforce transgender military ban during ongoing lawsuit appeared first on American Almanac .