A federal judge ruled that the U.S. military must take transgender service members by January 1, 2018. The ruling comes after one from last month that said that President Donald Trump’s order to ban new transgender recruits from joining the military cannot be enforced while the case is being reviewed in court, The Hill reports.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in her order emphasized that her injunction means that the military should follow the policies established by former President Barack Obama’s “June 30, 2016, Directive-type Memorandum.” According to that memorandum, transgender people are allowed to join the military from next year.
“Any action by any of the Defendants that changes this status-quo is preliminarily enjoined,” the judge wrote in the memo.
Back in August, Trump ordered that the military should stop recruiting transgender people and should not use funds to pay for surgeries related to gender transition. Also, according to the memo, Defense Secretary James Mattis had a six-month deadline to assess the role of transgender troops who are currently serving in the military. In the memo released in August, the judge said that the plaintiffs in the case, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) will probably succeed by saying that Trump’s ban violates their Fifth Amendment right to due process.
“The court finds that a number of factors—including the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered by the directives, the unusual circumstances surrounding the President’s announcement of them, the fact that the reasons given for them do not appear to be supported by any facts, and the recent rejection of those reasons by the military itself — strongly suggest that Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment claim is meritorious,” she wrote last month.
GLAD and The National Center for Lesbian Rights represent six unnamed service members and two recruits.
“This is an important clarification because it means the military can’t do an end run around the judge’s decision,” Jennifer Levi from GLAD said about the newest order.
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