Military Must Accept Transgender Troops From 2018, Federal Judge Rules

Granting a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration’s transgender military ban, a federal judge ordered the Pentagon to accept transgender recruits starting Jan.1, 2018.

The ruling on Monday by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly clarified an earlier order from October which partially blocked President Donald Trump's memorandum that disallowed transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military.

In her ruling, Kollar-Kotelly wrote that the military must continue to follow policies established by former President Barack Obama’s "June 30, 2016 Directive-type Memorandum," which allowed transgender individuals to enlist beginning on Jan. 1, 2018, and allowed them to serve openly and receive the required medical care for their gender transition through the military.

“I am directing the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the U.S. Coast Guard, to return to the longstanding policy and practice on military service by transgender individuals that was in place prior to June 2016 until such time as a sufficient basis exists upon which to conclude that terminating that policy and practice would not have the negative effects discussed above.”

The ruling further said: “The Court explained that the effect of its Order was to revert to the status quo with regard to accession and retention that existed before the issuance of the [Trump] Presidential Memorandum."

“Those policies allowed for the accession of transgender individuals into the military beginning on January 1, 2018. Any action by any of the Defendants that changes this status quo is preliminarily enjoined.”

In her ruling in October, Kollar-Kotelly said the ban of transgender people in the military was “disapproval of transgender people generally.”

According to the New York Times, the judge said the justification of the Trump administration for the ban was likely unconstitutional.

“The court finds that a number of factors — including the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered by the directives, the unusual circumstances surrounding the President’s announcement of them, the fact that the reasons given for them do not appear to be supported by any facts, and the recent rejection of those reasons by the military itself — strongly suggest that Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment claim is meritorious,” she wrote last month.

Another federal judge, Marvin J. Garbis of the Federal District Court for Maryland, also halted the policy that would have discharged all current transgender troops and prevent them from enlisting in the military.

“There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effective on the military at all,” the ruling said.

The controversial policy on banning transgender people in the military was brought into effect after President Trump announced in a series of tweets July that the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” of transgender troops in the military could not be afforded by American forces. He further said “the United States Government will not accept or allow them to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”

A month later, he signed a presidential memorandum that scrapped the Obama-era plan and banned the Department of Defense from providing medical treatment regimens for transgender individuals currently serving in the military.