By a 6-3 vote the Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump's administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.
The ruling means the military can begin discharging service members who are transgender and cease enlistment of transgenders.
The decision does not resolve the legal merits of the case which will likely return to the Court at a later date.
When he signed the executive order Trump made it clear that the sexual identity of transgender service members "conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life" and is harmful to military readiness.
Three district court judges, one of them from the Washington, D.C., court that sought to compel Trump to return a plane load of alleged gang members in mid-flight in an immigration case, had ruled against the military’s transgender ban.
One of them, Joe Biden appointee Ana Reyes, said the ban was “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.”
Reyes had more to say.
The ban’s “language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she added.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision and said the military is leaving “wokeness and weakness behind.”
“No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses,” he said.
Elaine Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness, said the decision recognizes the transgender lifestyle as medical condition that requires help.
"This is a very welcome decision on the part of the Supreme Court. The main point about it is that gender dysphoria is a medical condition. It's associated with clinically significant disease or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. So, it's a medical condition, one of hundreds, that make a person ineligible for military service."
Donnelly says it's going to take time for the three lawsuits to wind through the courts.
"But in the meantime, this president, at least in this case, will be allowed to pursue and implement the policy that he and his people in his administration have determined is important for military readiness and ability and morale and all the rest. So, it's a good decision."
