What The Hell America!

Two LGBTQ+ organizations sent a brief to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday night urging it to block President Donald Trump’s transgender military ban. The letter came hours after the Supreme Court allowed the administration’s executive order barring trans people from the military to go into effect while the case is argued in federal court. Experts say it is a longshot effort.

Queer rights groups have won two nationwide injunctions against the trans military ban from different judges. The Supreme Court lifted only the second injunction, in the case known as Shilling v. Trump. But the first injunction, in Talbott v. Trump, issued by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, remains legally untouched. In that case, a federal judge ruled that the government’s argument for barring transgender service members was ripe with “unadulterated animus.” Tuesday night’s brief, sent by GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), argues that the ruling from the Supreme Court has no bearing on the injunction in the first case, which they are fighting in court. 

Shannon Minter, legal director of NCLR and a lead attorney on Talbott v. Trump, told The 19th that the Trump administration has continued to display hostility toward transgender service members even while claiming in court that the policy was not discriminatory. 

“We have the secretary of defense out in public just repeatedly describing that the policy is based on hostility towards transgender people,” Minter said. “He’s expressing that…in the crudest terms imaginable.” 

Minter cited a May 6 post on X from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in which he celebrates the ruling: “No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more DUDES IN DRESSES,” Hegseth wrote. “We are done with that sh*t.”

Experts say that because the Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect while the legal challenge to Trump’s executive order is still playing out, it will likely rule in favor of it. 

Transgender journalist and advocate Imara Jones suggested in a statement that the ruling signaled a wider trend where discrimination against transgender people is greenlit at the highest levels of government.

“The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Trump’s ban on transgender soldiers in the military, even as the judicial process works its way through the overall question of service, signals that open discrimination against trans people is fair game across American society,” Jones said. 

Ezra Young, a constitutional law scholar and civil rights attorney, urged trans service members to reach out to their lawyers, stating that Tuesday’s decision did not definitively mean the end of their careers. 

“It doesn’t mean that they have decided for the first time ever in American history that trans people aren’t protected by laws that everyone else is protected by,” he said. “All this means is there’s a pause in a single case.”

 Minter said that means the issue of “animus” remains unanswered, and he wants the D.C. Court of Appeals to stand by its injunction. 

“We wanted to make sure that the D.C. Circuit recognizes that the stay order from the Supreme Court doesn’t tie its hands,” Minter said.

LGBTQ+ advocates had won an injunction in a third case, Ireland v. Hegseth, though that case only impacted two trans service members and is unlikely to impact service members nationally.

A full transgender military ban would result in one of the largest layoffs of transgender workers in history. Trans people are historically twice as likely to serve in the military as their cisgender peers, according to the U.S. Transgender Survey, and the military is the largest employer in the nation. The Pentagon has estimated there are 4,240 transgender people currently serving.

“The Court has upended the lives of thousands of service members without even the decency of explaining why,” Minter said.