Military gets OK on transgender restrictions
Staff/wire report
WASHINGTON
The Trump administration can go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender men and women while court challenges continue, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.
The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court’s five conservatives green-lighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have. The order from the court was brief and procedural, with no elaboration from the justices.
The court’s decision clears the way for the Pentagon to bar enlistment by people who have undergone a gender transition. It also will allow the administration to require that military personnel serve as members of their biological gender unless they began a gender transition under less restrictive Obama administration rules.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.
The court didn’t rule on the merits of the case, but allowed the ban to be enforced while lower courts handle it.
“Make no mistake, today’s SCOTUS decision makes us less safe and less military ready,” said Ryan, of Howland, D-13th. “Transgender service members have already been serving our country bravely and openly for over two years, and now this decision throws their futures into limbo.
“President Trump’s transgender ban was and always will be discriminatory and disgraceful, without any real evidence to why transgender people shouldn’t be in our military. He likes to talk about respecting the troops, but this is far from it. As a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, I will make sure we never turn our backs on those who put their lives on the line for our country and our freedoms. This fight isn’t over.”
The Trump administration has sought for more than a year to change the Obama-era rules and had urged the justices to take up cases about its transgender troop policy immediately, but the court declined for now.
Those cases will continue to move through lower courts and could eventually reach the Supreme Court again. The fact that five justices were willing to allow the policy to take effect for now, however, makes it more likely the Trump administration’s policy will ultimately be upheld.