The U.S. Supreme Court has paved the way for the Trump administration to implement a controversial policy barring transgender individuals from serving in the military. The decision, delivered on a Tuesday afternoon, allows the Department of Defense to enforce a policy that generally disqualifies individuals diagnosed with or treated for gender dysphoria from military service. The order came as a result of the Supreme Court pausing an earlier ruling by a federal judge in Washington state that had blocked the implementation of this policy across the United States.
Initially, a 2021 executive order by then-President Joe Biden had permitted transgender troops to serve openly. However, in a shift in January of the current year, President Donald Trump reversed this, instructing the Secretary of Defense to ban individuals with gender dysphoria, citing concerns about the compatibility of medical, surgical, and mental health conditions with military standards. The full details of the Department of Defense’s policy can be found in their official guidance.
The policy faced legal challenges from seven transgender service members, among others. One of the plaintiffs, Commander Emily Shilling, highlighted her long and costly training as a naval aviator. U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle had acknowledged these challenges, ruling that the policy breached the constitutional promise of equal protection, labeling it a “de facto blanket ban on transgender service.”
The Trump administration’s argument that delaying the policy’s implementation would harm military readiness was accepted by the Supreme Court. The court, via an unsigned order, approved the temporary stay of Judge Settle’s order while the government’s appeal proceeds in the Ninth Circuit, and potentially returns to the Supreme Court. Notably, the court’s Democratic appointees, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, signaled their opposition, suggesting they would have denied the request to enforce the ban.