President Donald Trump's directive Friday formally reinstituted a ban on transgender troops serving that was lifted last year. | Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images Pair of new lawsuits challenge Trump's transgender ban

A pair of advocacy groups said Monday they are going to court to overturn the Trump administration’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military, in the latest legal assault on the controversial directive.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of five transgender service members. The suit, filed by the Maryland branch of the ACLU, argues the ban is unconstitutional and discriminatory and has hired Covington and Burling, a powerful D.C. law firm, to represent it.


Also, Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN, which includes currently serving LGBT military personnel, separately filed suit on behalf of two transgender people who want to join the military and one currently in uniform, also citing constitutional concerns.

The Human Rights Campaign and the Gender Justice League are included in the effort.

“The law is on our side; justice is on our side," said Peter Perkowski, legal director for OutServe-SLDN. “Trump can’t tweet his way out of this one.”

The two cases follow President Donald Trump's directive Friday formally reinstituting a ban on transgender troops serving that was lifted last year. The directive also prohibits the Pentagon from paying for gender reassignment surgery but gives the defense secretary some leeway in deciding whether to kick out those who are currently serving.

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Estimates put the number of transgender troops in the ranks at several thousand to 15,000.

Many advocates hope Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will take a measured approach in implementing the policy, which also covers the Coast Guard.

But while Mattis and his counterpart at the Homeland Security Department will have "limited discretion" over whether to kick out individual service members, they will not have any authority to change or delay the overarching policy that deems trans troops unfit to serve, five current and former professors at military universities wrote in a memo issued Monday by the Palm Center, an independent research institute focused on sexual minorities.

Earlier this month, after Trump tweeted his intention to reinstitute the ban, five transgender troops represented by lawyers from GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed

the first lawsuit.

Brad Carson, the undersecretary of personnel and readiness in the Obama administration, has predicted that Trump’s policy will get so caught up in legal battles that it will never actually be implemented.