A federal court rejected Thursday the Trump administration’s appeal to prevent transgender individuals from being accepted into the U.S. military.
The three-judge panel consisting of Judges Diana Gribbon Motz, Albert Diaz and Pamela Harris ruled against the administration’s request to delay the January 1 deadline when the Pentagon is supposed to begin accepting transgender troops into the military.
Trump announced his intent to ban transgender individuals from enlisting in the military in July, following through with an August memo.
So far, four lawsuits have been filed against the ban, with judges in three of them ruling that the ban cannot take effect while the cases work their way through the courts. The administration appealed the preliminary injunctions demanding that the Pentagon be allowed to delay accepting transgender people.
The ruling on Thursday came in a case that the American Civil Liberties Union had filed on behalf of six current transgender members of the Armed Forces.
“We are happy that the court saw through the government’s smokescreen and rejected its request to further delay the policy allowing transgender people to enlist. The military has already developed comprehensive guidance to prepare for a Jan. 1 start date, and the government failed to offer any credible reason why transgender people should be barred from enlisting if they can meet the same rigorous standards that apply to everyone else,” Josh Block of the ACLU said.
The Pentagon issued a memo on December 8 on how the military will process transgender people accepted in the military, which opponents of Trump’s ban say demonstrates that the Pentagon is ready to begin accepting transgender recruits.
The administration, on the other hand, argued the memo shows the Pentagon is struggling to comply with the court.
“All that this memorandum shows is that the military is scrambling to comply with the injunction,” administration lawyers wrote in a court filing Wednesday.
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