Washington
Last week, the president revoked the full ban he initially backed last summer for a new policy that still would disqualify many transgender troops who have had gender reassignment surgery.
As the White House unveiled its new order on Friday night, Justice Department lawyers filed papers asking four federal courts to lift preliminary injunctions those courts issued late last year over the previous iteration of the ban.
The legal maneuvers are similar to the flurry of federal-court activity as the White House imposed and then altered entry ban orders as it navigated court decisions.
The injunctions that froze the Trump administration’s initial ban on transgender troops came in lawsuits brought by some troops, would-be recruits, human rights groups and several states against a change the would undo an Obama-era policy from 2016 allowing transgender individuals to enlist and serve openly.
In those lawsuits, judges in Washington, Baltimore, Seattle and Riverside, Calif., had said the Trump ban of last year probably was discriminatory and required the military to allow transgender recruits to enlist and continue to serve openly, effective on Jan. 1.
The four courts had said the parties bringing the lawsuits were likely to win their arguments that the initial ban was unlawful.
On Wednesday in Washington, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly declined to lift two orders she issued late last year temporarily halting the ban.
Instead, she gave GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights — who have sued on behalf of six active-duty transgender service members — until April 6 to amend their lawsuit in light of the new executive order.
The judge then gave the Justice Department until April 20 to say how it intends to proceed.
Justice Department senior trial counsel Ryan Parker and trial attorney Andrew Carmichael had told the court the block to the ban in essence was moot in light of the changes on Friday.
They asked Kollar-Kotelly to dissolve her injunction, saying the basis for it “no longer exist” and that a streamlined ban, like that issued on Friday, was necessary to counter the risk to “military readiness.”
“Far from a categorical ban based on transgender status, this new policy … turns on the medical condition of gender dysphoria and contains a nuanced set of exceptions allowing some transgender individuals, including almost every Plaintiff here, to serve,” the government’s attorneys wrote.
They added in filings that the most recent policy was based on a “detailed explanation for why, in the professional, independent judgment of the Defense Department, this new policy is necessary to further military interests.”