This plea was made to the US Apex court on Thursday to strengthen his policies towards curbing transgender rights in the country.
The United States government under President Donald Trump has asked the country’s Supreme Court to allow implementation of his order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
This plea was made to the US Apex court on Thursday to strengthen his policies towards curbing transgender rights in the country.
Reuters reports that the Justice Department has requested that the court lift the nationwide order issued by the U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle from Seattle.
This order currently prevents the military from enforcing former President Trump’s prohibition on transgender service members while a legal challenge to this policy is ongoing.
Judge Settle determined that Trump’s executive order is likely in violation of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law.
The injunction “cannot be squared with the substantial deference that the (Department of Defense’s) professional military judgments are owed,” the Justice Department said in the filing.
The Defense Department has “rationally determined that service by individuals with gender dysphoria would undermine military effectiveness and lethality consistent with similar, longstanding determinations for a wide range of other medical conditions” such as asthma and hypertension, the filing stated.
Trump in January signed an executive order that cast the gender identity of transgender people as a lie and asserted that they are unable to satisfy the standards needed for service in the American armed forces.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” Trump’s order stated
The directive reversed a policy implemented under Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden to allow transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces.
The Pentagon later issued guidance to implement Trump’s order, disqualifying from military service current troops and applicants with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition steps. The guidance allowed people to be considered for a waiver on a case-by-case basis if their service would directly support “warfighting capabilities.”
Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.
The Supreme Court previously weighed in on Trump’s targeting of transgender troops during his first term in office, allowing the Defense Department in 2019 to enforce a more limited restriction that had let certain personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria after entering the military to continue to serve.
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