Federal appeals court upholds block on Trump's trans military ban

A federal appeals court in California on Friday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency attempt to revive its ban on transgender military service, delivering another legal defeat to the president’s sweeping effort to exclude transgender Americans from public life.

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In a one-page order, a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied the Department of Defense’s request to stay a lower court ruling that protects transgender service members and recruits. The order keeps in place Washington state U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle’s March 28 injunction in Shilling v. Trump, which bars the military from enforcing Executive Order 14183, which bans trans people from the military, while the case proceeds.

Related: What you need to know about Donald Trump’s attempt to ban transgender people from the military

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation and Lambda Legal brought the case in February on behalf of seven active-duty transgender service members, one transgender person seeking to enlist, and the Seattle-based Gender Justice League. The legal teams argue that the ban violates the constitutional rights of transgender people and rests on discrimination rather than evidence.

“The court’s denial today recognized that the government is not harmed when transgender servicemembers, who meet the same standards as their peers, are able to serve,” HRC and Lambda Legal said in a joint statement after the court’s decision. “To the contrary, the military is harmed when discriminatory policies exclude qualified people from service simply because of who they are.”

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Related: This trans Air Force recruit wants to jump out of planes to save others. He’s suing Trump to serve

The Ninth Circuit panel—Judges A. Wallace Tashima, John B. Owens, and Roopali Desai—found that the government failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm if the injunction remained.

Settle’s injunction blocks the administration from removing transgender troops or denying enlistment based on gender identity. His ruling applies nationwide and protects the plaintiffs and all similarly situated service members, including those stationed overseas.

In his decision, Settle rejected the government’s argument that military judgment justified the ban. “Any evidence that such service over the past four years harmed any of the military’s inarguably critical aims would be front and center,” he wrote. “But there is none.”

Related: Meet the transgender Army lieutenant who is challenging Donald Trump’s military ban

The Ninth Circuit left the existing briefing schedule in place and said it would schedule oral arguments after the government files its reply brief.

Meanwhile, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Tuesday in Talbott v. Trump, a parallel case brought by GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. That case also challenges the ban’s constitutionality and stems from a separate injunction issued by D.C. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, who described the policy as “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.”

In both cases, the Biden-era protections for transgender service members remain intact—for now.