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The move came one day after former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was sworn-in as attorney general. | Getty Feds drop request to rein in ban on Obama transgender policy

The Trump administration has found a nationwide injunction it can live with.

In the slew of lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump's travel ban executive order, Justice Department lawyers have repeatedly argued that — whatever the alleged legal defects in his order — nationwide injunctions on its enforcement are improper.

However, on Friday night, Justice Department attorneys handling a lawsuit over President Barack Obama's efforts to protect transgender individuals dropped an effort to temporarily rein in a nationwide injunction a Texas federal judge imposed last year. That injunction prohibited the feds from enforcing the Obama administration's view that existing civil rights laws cover discrimination against those who are transgender.

Last November, the Justice Department appealed U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor's ruling to the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. But the Obama administration did not ask that O'Connor's injunction be immediately lifted.

Instead, Justice Department attorneys urged the appeals court to limit the injunction so it only applied in the 13 states involved in filing the suit challenging the transgender policy.

That request to narrow O'Connor's injunction was set to be argued before a three-judge 5th Circuit panel on Tuesday in Austin, Texas, but on Friday evening the Justice Department withdrew the stay request.

No explanation for the change in position was given to the court. The move came one day after former Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was sworn-in as attorney general.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the filing.

The notice filed with the 5th Circuit suggested the Justice Department and the states pressing the transgender-related case — led as they often are by the state of Texas — are exploring some sort of settlement to the dispute.

"The parties are currently considering how best to proceed in this appeal," the jointly filed notice said.

Dropping the stay request avoids Justice Department lawyers having to appear before the 5th Circuit this week to argue for the stay while likely having little clarity to offer the court on how what stance the Trump administration plans to take on the transgender issues at the heart of the dispute.

The Justice Department has not completely abandoned the position that O'Connor's injunction was too broad. Federal government lawyers could pursue that claim as the appeal goes forward, but with their action Friday they have given up the effort to keep enforcing Obama's interpretation of transgender rights while the appeal proceeds.

The Supreme Court might give some guidance on that issue relatively soon. The justices are set to hear arguments next month on a case involving a transgender Virginia student who was born female but sought to use the boys' room at his public high school.

Normally, the justices would decide the case by June. However, it's possible the court might drop the case altogether, not rule squarely on the transgender rights issue, or even punt the case until they have a ninth colleague on the currently shorthanded high court bench.

The Justice Department has long argued that nationwide injunctions are improper, in part because they can interfere with the normal process of different federal courts considering legal issues and issuing decisions that then percolate up through various appeals courts.

However, Texas and other states managed to obtain such a nationwide ban on key parts of Obama's effort to accommodate some immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally. In recent days, more liberal states have managed to harness that precedent to shut down Trump's travel ban order, at least for the time being.

Some of the Justice Department lawyers involved in defending the travel ban are also listed on the motion withdrawing the stay request in the transgender case, notably Civil Division special counsel August Flentje, who argued for the ban in the 9th Circuit session Tuesday. The acting chief of the Civil Division, Chad Readler, is also listed on the filing in the transgender case. Readler was listed on some pleadings in the travel ban case but took his name off more recent filings due to his former law firm's involvement in preparing an amicus brief in that dispute.