A federal court has issued a preliminary injunction on President Trump’s transgender military ban—a directive, issued via Twitter in July, to remove all transgender service members from the United States military and to ban transgender people from entering the armed forces. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a judge for the U.S. District Court in D.C., wrote that the Trump administration likely violated transgender service members’ rights under the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees due process under the law.
The judge took issue with everything from the framing of the directive to the way it was delivered, finding that “there is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all.” While the case is still in preliminary stages, the decision will at least temporarily halt the enforcement of the ban, signaling a tough legal battle ahead as the administration pushes to implement the president’s policy.
After the announcement in July, eight transgender people joined this lawsuit against the Trump administration: six pseudonymous plaintiffs who are all currently serving in the military, and two named plaintiffs who are hoping to join. The decision cites story after story of the emotional and financial distress brought on by Trump’s announcement: One Jane Doe worried about the loss of her medical care, while another felt like the president had enabled increased hostility toward transgender people. Another “went to work each day wondering whether [she] would be discharged, not because of any problem with [her] job performance or [her] commitment to serve this country, but solely because of [her] gender identity.” Regan Kibby, one of the named plaintiffs, who is a 19-year-old student in the U.S. Naval Academy, said that the “entire future [he] had been planning for [himself] was crumbling around [him].”