By TARA COPP, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Advocacy groups are set to file the first lawsuit Tuesday challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order for the Pentagon to revise its policy on transgender troops, likely setting up ban on their service in the armed forces.
It’s the same legal team that spent years during Trump’s first administration fighting the Republican’s ban on transgender troops, which the Supreme Court allowed to take effect even as the legal fight against it continued in the courts, before then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.
Trump’s new order, signed Monday, claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle” and is harmful to military readiness. It requires Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to issue a revised policy.
“The law is very clear that the government can’t base policies on disapproval of particular groups of people,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “That’s animus. And animus-based laws are presumed to be invalid and unconstitutional.”
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In response, the NCLR and GLAD Law are filing a challenge to the executive order Tuesday in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia, Minter said.
The groups also are challenging the executive order on the basis of equal protection.
In a statement, the Pentagon said that it does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation but that it “will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the Executive Orders issued by the President, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives.”
There is no official data on the number of transgender personnel in the military, but the number is likely in the thousands, Minter said. Unlike Trump’s initial ban in 2017, the new executive order not only bans all future transgender personnel from serving but also would target all current transgender troops, Minter said.
