Federal judge blocks Trump administration from banning transgender people from military service

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.

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 was the second judge of the day to rule against the administration, and both rulings came within hours of an extraordinary conflict as Trump called for impeaching a third judge who temporarily blocked deportation flights, drawing a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.

Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, delayed her order until Friday morning 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.”

Army Reserves 2nd Lt. Nicolas Talbott, one of 14 transgender active-duty servicemembers named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he was holding his breath as he waited to find out if he would be separated from the military next week.

“This is such a sigh of relief,” he said. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. This is my dream job, and I finally have it. And I was so terrified that I was about to lose it.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, posted about the ruling on social media, writing, “District court judges have now decided they are in command of the Armed Forces…is there no end to this madness?”

The judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys who also represent 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.

Reyes said she did not take lightly her decision to issue an injunction blocking Trump’s order, noting that “Judicial overreach is no less pernicious than executive overreach.” But, she said, it was also the responsibility of each branch of government to provide checks and balances for the others, and the court “therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day.”

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.

“The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed—some risking their lives—to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the military ban seeks to deny them,” Reyes wrote.

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.

Talbott, 31, of Akron, Ohio, enlisted in March 2024 as an openly trans person after fighting for roughly nine years to join the service. He said his fellow soldiers gave him some good-natured flak for being so much older than other recruits, but never treated him differently for being trans. Talbott anticipates that his colleagues will be “pretty excited that I get to stay.”

“Now I can go back to focusing on what’s really important, which is the mission,” said Talbott, a platoon leader for a military policing unit.

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Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Gene Johnson contributed to this story.

Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press