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Trump announced in March that he would endorse a plan by Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of
transgender people who experience a condition called gender
dysphoria. The policy replaced an outright ban on transgender
service members that Trump announced last year on Twitter,
citing concern over military focus and medical costs.
But judges in federal courts in Washington state, California,
and Washington, D.C., refused to lift injunctions that they had
issued against Trump's original ban to allow the updated policy
to be enforced.
The judges said the new policy was essentially the same as the
original ban, or was merely a plan to implement the original
ban, which they had ruled would likely run afoul of the U.S.
Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law.
The government's appeals of those rulings had been moving
forward. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals heard oral arguments in one case it is handling in
October.
But by seeking high court review before the appeals courts have
ruled, which has been a hallmark of the administration's
litigation strategy, the government said it wanted to ensure
that the Supreme Court would be able to review the dispute
before its term ends in June 2019.
The American Psychiatric Association defines gender dysphoria as
a "clinically significant distress" due to a conflict between a
person's gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. Not
all transgender people suffer from gender dysphoria, according
to the association, which opposes the military ban.
Current and aspiring military service members sued in courts
around the United States after Trump announced his ban, which
reversed Democratic former President Barack Obama's policy of
allowing transgender troops to serve openly and receive medical
care to transition genders.
In the court filing requesting the Supreme Court's review, the
Justice Department said Mattis and other military leaders
determined that the Obama policy "posed too great a risk to
military effectiveness and lethality."
"This is simply one more attempt by a reckless Trump
administration to push through a discriminatory policy," said
Jennifer Levi, director of the transgender rights project for
the antidiscrimination group GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders,
who represents some of the plaintiffs.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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