D.C. federal judge signals urgency as trans service members push for Trump military ban trial

Transgender service members challenging President Donald Trump’s military ban are asking a federal judge to move their lawsuit toward trial as the Pentagon has already begun initiating separation proceedings against some of them.

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One plaintiff, Amiah Sale, has been ordered to appear before a military separation board on March 24, according to a new court filing. Another, Gordon Herrero, received notice on January 6 that elimination proceedings against him had begun. Both are named plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States, the central legal challenge to Trump's January 2025 executive order banning transgender people from military service.

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The plaintiffs are represented by GLAD Law and the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights.

“These service members deserve their day in court, and the public deserves to know what is driving the ban,” NCLR legal director Shannon Minter, one of the lead attorneys on the case, told The Advocate. "The government wants to drag its feet and stonewall because it knows it has absolutely no evidence to support this harmful policy."

In a motion filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the plaintiffs asked Judge Ana Reyes to schedule the case's first litigation conference within 45 days and to open discovery, the phase in which both sides exchange evidence and depose witnesses. The request follows the government’s August 2025 filing of an answer to the plaintiffs’ complaint, a procedural milestone that, under the court’s standing order, triggers the scheduling process.

Within hours of the motion's filing, Reyes ordered the government to respond by March 11 at 5 p.m.

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The case has already drawn one of the sharpest judicial rebukes of the administration's anti-transgender policies. Last March, Reyes issued a nationwide injunction blocking the ban, writing that the policy was "soaked in animus and dripping with pretext" and finding the government had offered no credible evidence that excluding transgender troops improved military readiness.

The administration appealed. The D.C. Circuit issued an initial administrative stay days later, then a formal stay pending appeal in December 2025. Oral arguments on the injunction appeal were held on January 22; that ruling remains pending. But neither stay touched the underlying case in district court, and the plaintiffs are now pressing to build the full factual record that a final ruling would require.

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"Regardless of the outcome of the pending appeal," the motion states, plaintiffs "are entitled, and intend, to conduct discovery and litigate this case on the merits through final judgment in this Court."

That discovery process could surface internal Pentagon documents and communications revealing how the policy was developed and whether it can survive constitutional scrutiny. Reyes has already indicated it likely cannot.

During earlier hearings, Reyes pressed government lawyers on the evidentiary basis for the ban, noting their portrayal of transgender service members as "dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined" bore no resemblance to the service records before her.