In another end-of-week news dump, the White House on Friday night released a memorandum effectively banning transgender people from serving in the military, following through on orders Donald Trump issued on Twitter last summer. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory,” Trump wrote at the time, “and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”

That initial order, which came as a surprise to the Pentagon, was put on ice after Defense Secretary James Mattis said he would need time to review the order. In the meantime, several top military officials and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff tacitly criticized the ban, offering staunch defenses of the transgender men and women serving in uniform. Saving face, the White House in August directed the Pentagon to formalize the president’s tweet.

The new guidelines are only somewhat less broad than Trump’s first order, vaguely targeting most transgender people who require medical services related to gender reassignment surgery or hormone therapy. Friday’s memorandum would bar “persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria—including individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery” and would disqualify them “from military service except under limited circumstances.” In a statement, the White House defended the ban as a common-sense way to “apply well-established mental and physical health standards—including those regarding the use of medical drugs—equally to all individuals.”

It is possible that the ban will never actually be put in place: while the Trump administration is framing the order as “a new policy developed through extensive study by senior uniformed and civilian leaders,” it is substantively the same as the previous Trump policy, which is currently facing multiple lawsuits on constitutional grounds. Four federal courts have issued injunctions in cases filed by civil rights groups, and may ultimately end up before the Supreme Court. The Pentagon said Friday that it will continue to abide by Obama-era policies welcoming transgender troops while those legal battles continue.

Many activist groups derided Trump’s memorandum, saying that it would only contribute to the discrimination experienced by all transgender people. “What the White House has released tonight is transphobia masquerading as policy,” the ACLU’s Joshua Block said in a statement accusing the administration of forcing transgender people to choose between their humanity and their country. “This policy is not based on an evaluation of new evidence. It is reverse-engineered for the sole purpose of carrying out President Trump’s reckless and unconstitutional ban, undermining the ability of transgender service members to serve openly and military readiness as a whole.”