Legal team tells D.C. appeals court Hegseth’s words show Trump’s trans military ban is about hate, not policy

The legal team behind one of the most pivotal challenges to President Donald Trump’s renewed transgender military ban filed an urgent letter Tuesday night, arguing that the U.S. Supreme Court’s unexplained decision to stay an injunction in a separate case does not—and should not—affect theirs.

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GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represent 32 transgender plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit that the high court’s stay in Shilling v. Trump has no bearing on Talbott. In that case, a federal judge explicitly found that the Trump policy is rooted in anti-transgender bias. The late-night brief followed a Justice Department filing earlier that day informing the court of the Shilling decision and attaching it as supposed precedent.

“The district court in Shilling didn’t rule on animus at all,” NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter told The Advocate. “The Talbott court did—and that legal distinction matters. The Supreme Court’s order says nothing about animus, and it would be improper for the D.C. Circuit to assume it applies to a different ruling based on a completely different legal foundation.”

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, who issued the nationwide injunction in Talbott on March 18, ruled that the Trump administration’s executive order and so-called [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth Policy most likely violate the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. She wrote that the order was “soaked with animus and dripping with pretext,” and that it would impose immediate and irreparable harm on transgender troops by categorically stigmatizing them as unfit.

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That harm is not theoretical. If the D.C. Circuit grants the government’s request to stay the injunction, the Pentagon will be free to begin separating thousands of transgender service members—some of whom have served for decades—under a policy that offers no exemption, no recourse, and no connection to performance.

“This isn’t how the military treats any other medical condition,” Minter said. “With any other condition, they do an individualized assessment. They don’t just automatically kick people out. This is not a policy. It’s a ban.”

That point is made clear in the brief, which cites recent public statements from Hegseth as further proof of animus. In a video posted by the Department of Defense on Tuesday—the same day the Supreme Court allowed the Shilling ban to proceed—Hegseth declared: “We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind. No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses. We are done with that shit.”

“He’s become increasingly crude and extreme,” Minter said. “He’s confirming exactly what Judge Reyes already found: that this ban is about animosity, not readiness.”

In contrast to how the Supreme Court acted in Shilling, Minter said he hopes the D.C. Circuit at least explains its decision.

“One of the things that was just insult on top of injury was that the Supreme Court didn’t even have the decency to offer a word of explanation,” he said. “They authorized a purge of thousands of service members who have done nothing wrong—and said nothing.”

Minter added that the government, by its own admission, failed to identify any operational harm that justified the rush. “Their argument was simply, ‘We changed our minds.’ That’s not an emergency,” he said. “The real emergency is what this ban will do to the lives and careers of people who are serving honorably right now.”

If the D.C. Circuit denies the stay, Minter said the government will likely seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court again. If the stay is granted, plaintiffs may ask the full circuit court to reconsider.

But the damage is already mounting, he warned. “This will result in the separation of thousands of transgender troops,” Minter said. “That’s never happened in U.S. history. And I’m not sure the Supreme Court even realized that’s what it was doing.”

The Talbott plaintiffs include officers and enlisted service members from every branch. Their legal team has emphasized that these individuals collectively have over a century of military service and dozens of commendations.