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Lt. Nicolas Talbott
“The government made no secret of its intent," lead attorney Jennifer Levi of GLAD Law told The Advocate in an interview.
The legal fight over President Donald Trump’s revived ban on transgender military service intensified Thursday as attorneys and plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States pressed the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower court’s injunction blocking what they call “unconstitutional animus toward transgender people.”
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In a newly filed appellate brief, lawyers for a group of transgender service members and recruits argued that the policy, first announced in Executive Order 14183 and implemented by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has no factual foundation. “There is no evidence to support the ban,” they wrote, noting that during oral arguments, government lawyers conceded that each active-duty plaintiff is “honorable, truthful, and disciplined,” physically and mentally fit to serve, and has “made America safer.”
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Despite those admissions, the policy orders their discharge solely for being transgender, which attorneys called “clear, unconstitutional discrimination targeting service members based on who they are rather than whether they can do the job.”
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes agreed earlier this year when she granted a nationwide preliminary injunction halting enforcement of the ban. In her opinion, Reyes found that the Trump administration’s stated justifications — readiness, cost, and cohesion — were “contradicted by its own evidence.” She wrote that the policy “reflects a bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group” and is “soaked with animus and dripping with pretext.”
Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law and one of the lead attorneys in the case, said Reyes’s finding on animus was pivotal. “Judge Reyes made very specific factual findings that demonstrated that the purpose of the executive order and the Hegseth policy was to harm transgender people,” Levi told The Advocate. “The government made no secret of its intent. There’s a very strong record making the case of animus, expressed on the face of the policy and in the words and deeds of [Hegseth and Trump].”
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Levi added that the administration’s arguments fell apart under questioning. “The district judge asked the attorney, ‘What is the evidence of cost? What is the evidence of readiness?’ And actually, at every turn, the attorney conceded there is none. It’s all based on speculation,” she said.
For plaintiff and Army National Guard member Lt. Nicolas Talbott, who has spent his entire adult life fighting to serve openly, the legal battle feels both exhausting and necessary. “I’ve kind of been in this state of limbo since I became an adult,” said Talbott, 32. “It doesn’t make it any less difficult, but I appreciate how thorough this process is. We want to actually examine the evidence and look at our service records, which show there’s no reason we shouldn’t be allowed to serve.”
Talbott said he sees every step forward as progress, however slow it may be. “Any time there is any movement in the case, I see it as a positive, because movement means progress one way or the other,” he said. “At least we are not being thrown away and forgotten about.”
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He said the policy’s rollout has left transgender troops in uncertainty, unable to plan, train, or advance while their cases and careers hang in the balance. “I’d love to get a phone call tomorrow that says, ‘Lieutenant Talbott, you’re good, you’re staying in the Army,’ but that’s not going to happen tomorrow,” he said. “There’s not much I can do but take it day by day.”
Among the latest, most demeaning provisions, Talbott said, is a new requirement that transgender troops appear before separation or disciplinary boards in uniforms and grooming standards that match their sex assigned at birth. For him, that would mean shaving his mustache and wearing a woman’s uniform. “I cannot see how the new uniform requirement aligns with that promise of dignity and respect,” Talbott said. “It’s another corner we’ve been backed into — between a rock and a hard place. There’s no logical rationale behind that policy.”
Related: Another judge blocks the Pentagon from implementing Trump’s transgender military ban
Trying to find humor in the absurdity, Talbott said he and fellow service members have joked about what compliance would look like. “In the military, we learn not to take things personally,” he said. “So we joke that if they make us appear as female, I’ll just grow a full beard. Technically, there’s no rule that says women can’t have facial hair, so maybe that’s how we push back.”
He added that being forced to buy a new uniform under those rules would add insult to injury. “If they actually expect us to buy a uniform that doesn’t align with our identity, that’s another burden on top of everything else,” Talbott said. “To make us spend hundreds of dollars just to humiliate us — there’s no military or fiscal justification for that.”
He added, “That contradicts the promise that we have received that we’re going to be treated with dignity and respect throughout this process.”
Levi said the new uniform rule underscores the government’s disregard for fairness and due process. “It’s worse than that because it means that transgender service members cannot be present at their own proceedings designed to kick them out of the military,” she said. “There’s no more fundamental element of due process than being able to show up and present in your own defense. It’s cruel, but it’s also a violation of fundamental democratic values.”
Related: DOJ appeals block on Pentagon’s transgender military ban
She added that the broader policy rollout has been “chaotic” and exposes the administration’s intent to humiliate transgender troops rather than address readiness. “People have been pulled off of high-level operations that their troops and command are reliant on and have been for years,” Levi said. “The only conclusion to draw is that it’s just about demeaning transgender people and ripping away opportunities from them.”
Levi said the case ultimately reaches beyond military service — it tests the meaning of equal citizenship. “The point of this is to denigrate transgender people and to rip away from them this right of citizenship, which is the opportunity to serve on equal terms with others,” she said. “When a policy’s purpose is to harm a group rather than serve a legitimate military interest, it fails constitutional review — and this one does exactly that.”
For now, thousands of transgender service members remain in limbo, their futures dependent on a court’s judgment about whether prejudice can ever be disguised as policy.
Talbott said he remains determined to serve regardless of the uncertainty. “We adapt, because that’s what service members do,” he said. “But no one should have to prove their worth every day just because of who they are. I’ve already done the job. I just want the chance to keep doing it.”
On November 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia scheduled oral arguments for January 22 at 9:30 a.m.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with the oral argument date in January.
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