By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service on Tuesday, the latest in a string of legal setbacks for his sweeping agenda.
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U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., ruled that Trump’s order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.
She delayed her order until Friday to give the administration time to appeal.
“The court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes,” Reyes wrote. “We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.”
The judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys for six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military.
On Jan. 27, Trump signed an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.
In response to the order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies people with gender dysphoria from military service. Gender dysphoria is the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Trump’s order violates transgender people’s rights to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment.
Government lawyers argue that military officials have broad discretion to decide how to assign and deploy servicemembers without judicial interference.
Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.
In 2016, a Defense Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members. The Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.
Hegseth’s Feb. 26 policy says service members or applicants for military service who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
The plaintiffs who sued to block Trump’s order include an Army Reserves platoon leader from Pennsylvania, an Army major who was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan and a Sailor of the Year award winner serving in the Navy.
Their attorneys, from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law, said transgender troops “seek nothing more than the opportunity to continue dedicating their lives to defending the Nation.”
“Yet these accomplished servicemembers are now subject to an order that says they must be separated from the military based on a characteristic that has no bearing on their proven ability to do the job,” plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “This is a stark and reckless reversal of policy that denigrates honorable transgender servicemembers, disrupts unit cohesion, and weakens our military.”
Government attorneys said the Defense Department has a history of disqualifying people from military service if they have physical or emotional impairments, including mental health conditions.
“In any context other than the one at issue in this case, DoD’s professional military judgment about the risks of allowing individuals with physical or emotional impairments to serve in the military would be virtually unquestionable,” they wrote.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys say Trump’s order fits his administration’s pattern of discriminating against transgender people.
Federal judges in Seattle and Baltimore separately paused Trump’s executive order halting federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender youth under 19. Last month, a judge blocked prison officials from transferring three incarcerated transgender women to men’s facilities and terminating their access to hormone therapy under another Trump order.
Trump also signed orders that set up new rules about how schools can teach about gender and that intend to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
“From its first days, this administration has moved to strip protections from transgender people across multiple domains — including housing, social services, schools, sports, healthcare, employment, international travel, and family life,” plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Gene Johnson contributed to this story.
