Court voted 5-4 in favor of issuing a stay on efforts to block a plan to restrict trans people’s ability to serve in the military

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The supreme court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to limit transgender people from serving in the military while the legality of such a plan continues to be debated in lower courts.

The court voted 5-4 in favor of issuing a stay on efforts to block a plan to restrict transgender people’s ability to serve, meaning the plan can be implemented.

The dissenting justices were Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, the four liberals on the court.

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Until a few years ago, service members could be discharged from the US military for being transgender. That changed under former president Barack Obama, as the military announced in 2016 that transgender individuals already serving would be allowed to do so openly. The military set 1 July 2017 as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.

But after Donald Trump took office, the administration delayed the enlistment date, saying the issue needed further study. While that study was ongoing, the president tweeted in late July 2017 that the government would not allow “transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military”.

Trump’s move was reportedly resisted by elements of the administration including the then defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and the plan to completely ban transgender people from serving in the military was blocked by a federal judge.

The president directed the military to return to its policy before the Obama administration changes.

Groups representing transgender individuals sued, and the administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course. The supreme court has now lifted those preliminary injunctions.

This means hundreds of transgender people already in the military can continue their service but transgender people cannot join up. The policy also allows people who serve “in their biological sex” to join the military.

The LGBT civil rights group Lambda Legal said the court’s Tuesday decision was “perplexing, to say the least”. The group is involved with one of the court challenges to the transgender military restrictions.

Lambda Legal’s counsel, Peter Renn, said in a statement: “For more than 30 months, transgender troops have been serving our country openly with valor and distinction, but now the rug has been ripped out from under them, once again. We will redouble our efforts to send this discriminatory ban to the trash heap of history where it belongs.”

The court also announced on Tuesday it will hear its first case about the second amendment since 2010.

The case is a challenge to a New York City law that prohibits people licensed to have guns in their homes from transporting the weapons outside the city. The conservative majority on the court would suggest a good chance of the challenge being upheld.