NEW YORK ¨C The Trump administration is now claiming the upper hand in legal challenges to its prohibition on transgender Americans in the military thanks to the the U.S. Supreme Court¡¯s recent decision upholding the travel ban against several predominantly Muslim nations.
The Supreme Court in June held that Trump¡¯s many negative comments about Muslims on the campaign trail were irrelevant to a judicial review of the policy, particularly because the third and final version of the ban was based on an intense national security review. Likewise, Trump¡¯s ban on transgender soldiers was issued in 2017 with little preparation, only to be withdrawn and replaced this year by a more carefully drafted version.
The Trump administration connected the two directives in a Monday filing in federal court in Seattle, where a national civil rights organization, Lambda Legal, sued on behalf of transgender soldiers who want to overturn the policy. A judge put the ban on hold during the litigation.
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