Donald Trump will be forced to let transgender soldiers join the military in 34 days
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A judge has ruled that transgender soldiers must be allowed to join the military on January 1, dealing another huge blow to Donald Trump’s attempts to enforce a ban.
US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly filed an injunction in Washington, DC blocking parts of the order last month.
And the Washington DC judge has now confirmed that her ruling will bar the Trump administration from delaying the admission of new trans service personnel any longer.
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On July 1, Defense Secretary James Mattis pushed back the date on which trans people could enrol in the military.
But the Trump administration can hold back the tide of progress no longer.
Kollar-Kotelly has written: “Those policies allowed for the accession of transgender individuals into the military beginning on January 1, 2018.
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She followed this up with an underlined sentence which read: “Any action by any of the Defendants that changes this status quo is preliminarily enjoined,” according to ThinkProgress.
Trump stirred anger by announcing in July that he would impose a ban on transgender soldiers serving openly in the military.
Reversing a decision made under President Barack Obama, Trump claimed in a string of tweets that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail”.
But Kollar-Kotelly ruled that a lawsuit brought against the proposed ban by five active soldiers with more than 60 combined years of service was likely to win.
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And last week, District Judge Marvin J. Garbis went further, enabling trans troops who have scheduled transition-related medical care to continue with their treatment with no deadline.
The Maryland judge ruled that Trump’s potential prohibition was “egregiously offensive,” with no evidence to show it “was necessary for any legitimate national interest.”
The case, brought by the ACLU of Maryland on behalf of six soldiers, led District Judge Garbis to state that Trump’s ban “was not driven by genuine concerns regarding military efficacy.”
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He added the proposal was a betrayal of trans troops who were already serving, and one which could not even “survive a rational review” in court.
“The lack of any justification for the abrupt policy change,” he wrote, “combined with the discriminatory impact to a group of our military service members who have served our country capably and honorably, cannot possibly constitute a legitimate governmental interest.”
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He said that for Trump to remove constitutionally given freedoms from a group of individuals was “so outrageous” as to “shock the conscience.”
Garbis tore into Trump’s inflammatory tweets specifically, writing that his sudden announcement “certainly can be considered shocking under the circumstances.”
