Image copyright Reuters Image caption People protest President Trump's announcement of plans to reinstate a ban on transgender individuals from serving

The United States Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump to enforce his policy of banning certain transgender people from the military.

The court voted 5-4 to grant a Trump administration request to lift injunctions blocking the policy while challenges continue in lower courts.

The four liberal judges on the court opposed the ruling.

The policy prohibits "transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition" from serving.

The top court's ruling is not a mandate, but it has opened up the option for the military to enforce the ban.

The Trump administration had also appealed for an expedited ruling on the case, which the Supreme Court declined to take up.

What is the transgender policy?

The president announced on Twitter in 2017 that the country would no longer "accept or allow" transgender Americans to serve in the military, citing "tremendous medical costs and disruption".

The then defence secretary Jim Mattis refined the policy to limit it to individuals with a history of gender dysphoria, or when a person's biological sex and identity does not match.

He said the new policy would make exceptions for several hundred transgender people already serving openly or willing to serve "in their biological sex".

There are currently some 8,980 active duty transgender troops, according to Department of Defence data analysed by the Palm Center, a public policy nonprofit.

Gen Mattis in his memo argued that "by its very nature, military service requires sacrifice," and that those who serve "voluntarily accept limitations on their personal liberties".

The move is a reversal of an Obama administration policy that ruled transgender Americans could serve openly in the military as well as obtain funding for gender re-assignment surgery.

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, told the BBC: "We had an inclusive policy for almost three years. What today's ruling enables is the whipsawing of policy, back and forth."

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Riley Dosh explains why she wants to defend her country

The battle continues

This is just one Supreme Court action - and it's a procedural move, not a formal court opinion - but it may be a sign that a conservative majority sympathetic to presidential powers and prerogatives is flexing its muscles.

The Trump administration, frustrated that lower-court judges had again blocked implementation of one of its policy decisions, asked the justices to step in and clear the path.

The White House wanted a quick ruling because, it said, allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military presented "too great a risk to military effectiveness".

By a bare majority, the court complied.

Although the justices did not entirely bypass the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which the president has tried to paint as a bastion of liberal judges, they did the next best thing for the president.

They permitted the transgender ban to go into effect while the legal fight, which could last years, grinds on.

For the past two years, the president's opponents - locked out of national power until recently - have looked to the judicial system as a last line of defence.

As Tuesday clearly showed, however, those defences are only as strong as a majority of the Supreme Court says they are.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Being transgender in the US military

What are the legal challenges?

Several trial judges around the country had issued injunctions blocking the ban.

One injunction was reversed in a federal appeals court earlier this month, with a three-judge panel ruling the policy was not a "blanket ban" on transgender troops, and so the courts should defer to the executive branch's military decisions.

While Mr Trump's rationale for banning transgender troops was financial, according to estimates by the RAND Corporation, a policy think tank working with the US Armed Forces, transition-related healthcare costs are between $2.4m (£1.8m) and $8.4m per year.

In 2017, defence data viewed by the Palm Center indicates that cost was in fact lower, at $2.2m.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco had described the transgender ban in his fast-track appeal as "an issue of imperative public importance" regarding the military's authority "to determine who may serve".

Mr Belkin told the BBC: "This is not a financial issue, it's not a disruption issue - it's an issue of emotion, tolerance and politics."

The Supreme Court "had no business weighing in" at this point, he added.

"Not only is there no policy emergency, but there is not even a policy problem."

Image copyright Pacific Press via Getty Images Image caption A group of New Yorkers gathered in 2017 at the Trump International Hotel to protest against LGBT-discrimination

What is reaction?

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt Col Carla Gleason said in a statement that the military treats "all transgender persons with respect and dignity" and the new policy was "based on professional military judgement".

She said the "proposed policy is NOT a ban on service by transgender persons. It is critical that [the defence department] be permitted to implement personnel policies that it determines are necessary to ensure the most lethal and combat effective fighting force in the world."

Department of Justice spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the administration was "pleased" that the top court was "clearing the way for the policy to go into effect".

"Our military had been forced to maintain a prior policy that poses a risk to military effectiveness and lethality for over a year."

The top court's ruling has sparked outrage and frustration online.

Charlotte Clymer, a transgender Army veteran, tweeted: "This is a hateful and cowardly policy."

Others, however, said the ban just meant transgender troops must "conform to dress code/physical standards like everyone else".</s>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration can go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender men and women while court challenges continue, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court’s five conservatives greenlighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have. The order from the court was brief and procedural, with no elaboration from the justices.

As a result of the court’s decision, the Pentagon can implement a policy so that people who have changed their gender will no longer be allowed to enlist in the military. The policy also says transgender people who are in the military must serve as a member of their biological gender unless they began a gender transition under less restrictive Obama administration rules.

The Trump administration has sought for more than a year to change the Obama-era rules and had urged the justices to take up cases about its transgender troop policy immediately, but the court declined for now.

Those cases will continue to move through lower courts and could eventually reach the Supreme Court again. The fact that five justices were willing to allow the policy to take effect for now, however, makes it more likely the Trump administration’s policy will ultimately be upheld. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said the department was pleased with the court’s decision.

“The Department of Defense has the authority to create and implement personnel policies it has determined are necessary to best defend our nation,” she said, adding that lower court rulings had forced the military to “maintain a prior policy that poses a risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”

Groups that sued over the Trump administration’s policy said they ultimately hoped to win their lawsuits against the policy. Jennifer Levi, an attorney for GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, said in a statement that the “Trump administration’s cruel obsession with ridding our military of dedicated and capable service members because they happen to be transgender defies reason and cannot survive legal review.”

Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender. That changed under the Obama administration. The military announced in 2016 that transgender people already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017, as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.

But after President Donald Trump took office, the administration delayed the enlistment date, saying the issue needed further study. And in late July 2017 the president tweeted that the government would not allow “Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” He later directed the military to return to its policy before the Obama administration changes.

Groups representing transgender individuals sued, and the Trump administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course. It was those injunctions that the Supreme Court put on hold Tuesday, allowing the Trump administration’s policy to take effect.

The Trump administration’s revised policy on transgender troops dates to March 2018. The policy generally bars transgender people from serving unless they do so “in their biological sex” and do not seek to undergo a gender transition. But it has an exception for transgender troops who relied on the Obama-era rules to begin the process of changing their gender.

Those individuals, who have been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria,” a discomfort with their birth gender, can continue to serve after transitioning. The military has said that over 900 men and women had received that diagnosis. A 2016 survey estimated that about 1 percent of active duty service members, about 9,000 men and women, identify as transgender.</s>WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to go ahead with its plan to restrict military service by transgender people while court challenges continue.

The high court split 5-4 in allowing the plan to take effect, with the court's five conservatives greenlighting it and its four liberal members saying they would not have.

The Trump administration had urged the justices to take up cases about the plan directly, but the court declined for now. Those cases will continue to move through lower courts.

Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender. That changed under President Barack Obama. The military announced in 2016 that transgender individuals already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017 as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.

But after President Donald Trump took office, the administration delayed the enlistment date, saying the issue needed further study. While that study was ongoing, the president tweeted in late July 2017 that the government would not allow "Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military." He later directed the military to return to its policy before the Obama administration changes.

Groups representing transgender individuals sued, and the Trump administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course. The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted those preliminary injunctions.

In March 2018, the Trump administration announced that after studying the issue it was revising its policy. The new policy generally bars transgender individuals from serving unless they serve "in their biological sex" and do not seek to undergo a gender transition.

The policy has an exception for transgender troops who relied on the Obama-era rules to begin the process of changing their gender, allowing them to continue to serve. The military said last year that over 900 men and women have done so.</s>Supreme Court Revives Trump's Ban On Transgender Military Personnel, For Now

The Supreme Court has reinstated President Trump's order placing restrictions on transgender persons enlisting and serving in the military, by granting a stay of two lower court injunctions that had blocked the president's policy. The justices voted 5-4, reflecting the high court's conservative majority.

The decision allows the Pentagon to prevent many transgender persons from joining or, in some circumstances, remaining in the military while the lower court rulings that had blocked the policy are appealed. The justices did not allow the Trump administration to leapfrog the appeals court, as it had requested.

The two cases — Trump v. Karnoski and Trump v. Stockman — are currently working their way through the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

In both of those cases, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have maintained a stay on the ban, Tuesday's Supreme Court order reads.

The transgender ban is being revived more than a year after a federal court in Washington, D.C., first blocked it in October 2017. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled that trans members of the military had "a strong case that the president's ban would violate their Fifth Amendment rights," as NPR reported.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted Kollar-Kotelly's injunction earlier this month, concluding that the ban had been substantially revised by the time it was instituted by former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in March 2018. But other federal courts had also ruled against the ban — and until Tuesday, those other injunctions remained in place.

The two outstanding cases come from California and Washington state, in the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction.

Under Trump's policy, transgender persons who have a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria and who may require "substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery" are, with some exceptions, disqualified from military service.

The exceptions fall into four categories:

1. The more than 900 active-duty members of the military who a Pentagon report says were diagnosed with gender dysphoria after June 30, 2016. On that date former Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifted a prior ban on transgender persons serving in the military. This group will be allowed to receive required medical treatment to transition and to serve in their preferred gender, as long as they are not deemed nondeployable for more than 12 months.

2. Those who have been "stable for 36 consecutive months in their biological sex" before entering the military.

3. Those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria after beginning their military service but "do not require a change of gender."

4. Those whom the Pentagon calls "transgender persons without a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria" and who serve "in their biological sex."

Disqualified from serving in the military, according to a February 2018 memo from Mattis, are "transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition." Mattis based his recommendations on a 2017 study he had ordered, in which a 2016 Defense Department survey estimates that about 1 percent of the active-duty force, or 8,980 service members, identify as transgender.

The Human Rights Campaign, which is involved in the Karnoski case in Washington state, condemned the Supreme Court's decision, saying it "thrusts this administration's discriminatory agenda onto a military that clearly doesn't want it, and does so at the expense of transgender people's careers and service."

Trump announced his ban abruptly in the summer of 2017, saying in a series of tweets that "the United States Government will not accept or allow...... ....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."

The decision seemed to take Defense Department officials by surprise, sparking confusion despite Trump's assertion that he had consulted "with my Generals and military experts."

The tweets were followed by an official presidential memo in August of that year, which gave the defense secretary (and for the Coast Guard, the homeland security secretary) the discretion to "determine how to address transgender individuals currently serving in the United States military."

Trump's ban was a sharp reversal of a Pentagon policy announced in June 2016, when Carter said, "Effective immediately, transgender Americans may serve openly, and they can no longer be discharged or otherwise separated from the military just for being transgender."

That Obama-era policy was hailed as ending an era of legal and professional limbo for transgender persons in the U.S. armed services; Carter said the decision was made out of a desire to attract "all talent possible" to serve in the military.

At the time, researchers at the Rand Corp. think tank estimated there were as many as 7,000 active-duty transgender service members, with up to 4,000 more in the reserves.

Because of that policy and the lower court injunctions, the first openly transgender persons were able to join the U.S. military on Jan. 1, 2018. But now their status is once again in jeopardy.

Tuesday's order states that restrictions on transgender persons in the military will remain in effect until the 9th Circuit rules on the policy. The stay would continue if the case is argued before the Supreme Court.</s>
• A Supreme Court decision Tuesday let the Trump administration begin implementing its transgender military ban.
• The Department of Defense issued a statement reiterating its long-held stance that its new policy regarding transgender troops is “NOT a ban.”
• The policy does allow transgender troops to serve but only if they do so in their biological sex, do not have a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or can show a 36-month period of “stability” prior to military service.
• Advocates maintain the administration’s justifications, including potential negative impacts to unit readiness and cohesion and medical costs, have mostly been debunked.

On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to go forward in implementing its transgender military ban, meaning that the ban can go into effect while it is being challenged in court.

Although the administration’s policy, shaped after a report from former Defense Secretary James Mattis, is widely viewed as a bar against transgender troops, the Department of Defense has long held that its policy on military service by transgender persons is not a universal ban.

“As always, we treat all transgender persons with respect and dignity. DoD’s proposed policy is NOT a ban on service by transgender persons,” DoD spokeswoman Lt. Col. Carla Gleason said in a statement Tuesday. “It is critical that DoD be permitted to implement personnel policies that it determines are necessary to ensure the most lethal and combat effective fighting force in the world.”

The policy currently in effect is based on a memorandum filed by former Secretary Mattis at the end of his review of the previous administration’s decision to open the ranks. It does not outright ban transgender persons from service, but there are caveats that make military service difficult for members of the transgender community.

The Defense Department maintains its policy is not a universal ban.

The policy differentiates between transgender persons and those with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is the medical diagnosis for someone who experiences emotional distress with one’s biological sex. Not all people who identify as transgender have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, The National Center for Transgender Equality explains.

For those who identify as transgender, but have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the policy outright disqualifies any transgender person who has already transitioned – or a person living as the gender they identify as not the gender assigned at birth – or requires transition.

The policy also disqualifies those who may require a medical transition based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Citing “considerable scientific uncertainty” and blurred lines “that demarcate male and female standards,” the defense department maintains that the requirements of transition-related treatment come at too high a cost for taxpayers and could result in impairments to unit cohesion and readiness (how soon they could deploy).

Transgender persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria are generally disqualified, although there are some exceptions. Anyone who has previously been diagnosed with gender dysphoria must demonstrate “36 consecutive months of stability (i.e., absence of gender dysphoria)” immediately prior to military service. This would require a transgender person to prove they have not experienced discomfort with their biological sex for three years before joining. They must also agree not to transition during service and adhere to the standards of their biological sex.

Essentially, if persons identify as transgender, they can serve in the military – but only if they do so in their biological sex not as the gender they may identify with.

For those who identify as transgender who are already serving the the military, persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria before the policy’s date, can still go through with transition. Those who join the military and then are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, can stay in the military if they do not transition.

According to CNN, waivers may be granted by the Department of Defense “on a case-by-case basis.”

The DoD’s justifications have been debunked by its own officers

Under former Secretary Mattis, the DoD upended a milestone policy change that allowed a path for transgender people to serve in their preferred gender versus their biological sex. According to a report released in February 2018, a panel of military experts found that former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter‘s 2016 policy, implemented towards the end of the Obama administration created a financial burden and carried potential risks to unit cohesion and readiness.

But other experts – and the service chiefs from each branch of the military – have highlighted that these claims are largely without evidence.

In independent hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early 2018, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand asked all four service branch chiefs whether they had received any reports of lowered morale, unit cohesion, or disciplinary issues rising due to transgender troops serving openly.

All four stated that there were no known issues or reports.

The other DoD justification concerns medical costs and deployability of transitioning service members.

According to Radha Iyengar, one of the authors of a RAND Corp study that influenced the decision to allow open transgender service, those justifications are also misguided.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Iyengar explained that the actual costs of medical care for transgender troops – which would amount to about $2.4 to $8.4 million – would comprise only one-tenth of 1% of the military’s annual medical spending.

Iyengar also told the Post that the 10 to 130 troops who would be unable to deploy would have negligible impact on the military.

“In 2015, about 50,000 soldiers alone were not deployable due to medical reasons in the active component. So the scale of the effects here are relatively small,” she told Post reporter Alex Horton.

Advocacy groups maintain that in light of these factors, the administration’s policy is, in effect, a ban against transgender people serving openly. Four lawsuits have been filed on behalf of transgender plaintiffs who are actively serving. Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allows the Trump administration to implement the ban temporarily while those lawsuits continue through the courts.

The fate of transgender service members, including those serving openly, remains unclear. The DoD statement did not clarify how the ban would be implemented in the immediate aftermath of the decision.

Kristin Beck, retired Navy SEAL and transgender civil rights activist, called the ban “bulls—” but said transgender troops would still find a way to serve.

“We’re going to do whatever we have to to live our life. Life always finds a way, and we’re going to find a way,” she told Business Insider. “We’re not going to be told we can’t do this.”</s>Donald Trump's restrictions on transgender troops to be enforced after US Supreme Court ruling

The US Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump to enforce his policy barring certain transgender people from joining or staying in the military, as the justices put on hold lower court rulings blocking the plan on constitutional grounds.

The conservative-majority court split 5-4 to grant the Trump administration's request to lift injunctions issued by federal judges against the policy while a legal challenge continues in lower courts.

Transgender advocates reacted to the decision with outrage.

"The Trump administration's cruel obsession with ridding our military of dedicated and capable service members because they happen to be transgender defies reason and cannot survive legal review," said GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) transgender rights project director Jennifer Levi.

The justices refused the administration's request for them to decide the merits of the legal fight even before a California-based federal appeals court already considering the matter is given a chance to rule.

Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender. That changed under former president Barack Obama.

The military announced in 2016 that transgender individuals already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017 as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.

Mr Trump tweeted in late July 2017 that the Government would not allow "Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military".

He later directed the military to return to its policy that was in place before the Obama administration changes.

Lawsuits challenging the policy were filed in 2017 by civil liberties and rights groups on behalf of current transgender military service members, including some deployed overseas with decades of experience in the armed forces, and transgender people aspiring to join the military.

The Trump administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course.

In March 2018, the Trump administration announced that after studying the issue it was revising its policy.

The new policy generally bars transgender individuals from serving unless they serve "in their biological sex" and do not seek to undergo a gender transition.

The policy has an exception for transgender troops who relied on the Obama-era rules to begin the process of changing their gender, allowing them to continue to serve.

The military said last year that more than 900 men and women have done so.</s>WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to go ahead, for now, with its plan to ban transgender military service.

The court, without comment, granted a request from the Justice Department to allow the government to enforce the ban while challenges to the policy play out in the lower courts. The earliest the Supreme Court could act on the issue would be during its next term which begins in October.

In a July 2017 tweet, President Donald Trump announced that he would end a policy, begun during the Obama administration, that allows transgender men and women to serve openly and to have the government pay for sex-reassignment surgery.

"After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity," he said. "Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

Six months later, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis announced a revised policy that would allow transgender individuals in the military, provided that they served "in their biological sex" and did not seek gender-transition surgery.

Federal district court judges in California, Washington, DC, and Washington state issued orders blocking the policy nationwide. They said it likely amounted to unconstitutional discrimination and rejected the administration's claims that military readiness was at issue.

"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. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects," wrote Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the court in Washington, D.C.

The Justice Department went to the U.S. Supreme Court in November, urging the justices to take up the issue even before the cases had gone through the federal appeals courts — a request the Supreme Court grants very rarely. A month later, the government as a fall back asked the court to narrow the effect of the lower court rulings so that they applied only to the individuals who sued and not to the entire country.

The cases involve "a matter of imperative public importance: the authority of the U.S. military to determine who may serve in the nation's armed forces," Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the court. "The Secretary of Defense determined that individuals with a history of the medical condition gender dysphoria should be presumptively disqualified from military service, particularly if they have undergone the treatment of gender transition or seek to do so."

Opponents of the ban urged the court to leave the lower court orders in place that prevent enforcement of the Trump administration's proposed policy change.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday also opted to stay out of several other high-profile legal battles, which included taking no action on Tuesday on the future of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a move that requires the government to keep the program going for at least 10 more months.

The justices also took no action the issue of whether federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination on the job also apply to sexual orientation. Federal appeals courts are divided on the question.

Some have ruled that in passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Congress did not intend to include same-sex bias when it prohibited job discrimination on the basis of race, sex, and other characteristics. But other courts have said discriminating against someone because of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination. Civil rights groups say there's no need to change the law, arguing that it already bans discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

In other action Tuesday, the justices said they would not hear Indiana's effort to revive a state law intended to restrict access to abortion. Passed in 2016 and signed by then-governor Mike Pence, the law prohibited what the state called discriminatory abortions — those sought because of characteristics of the fetus, including gender, race, or diagnosis of Down syndrome or other defect.

Supporters of the measure said the law responded to medical developments that allow women to choose which child to bear, an option the state said was not contemplated at the time of the Roe v Wade decision. But Planned Parenthood said it was an unconstitutional restriction on abortion rights and lower courts agreed, preventing the law from taking effect.</s>On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to enforce President Trump’s policy on barring certain transgender people from joining or staying in the military as justices put lower court rulings, which blocked the plan, on hold.



Thanks to the conservative-leaning majority (looking at you, Brett “I like beer. I still like beer” Kavanuagh) what started as a tweet is now a court-sanctioned policy that will lift injunctions issued by federal judges while the legal battles continue in lower courts.

Although justices refused to hear the case “before the Trump administration fights its way through federal appeals courts,” this is still a victory for the Trump administration which sought to ban all transgenders from military service.

“Trump announced the policy in July 2017 with a tweet that said the government ‘will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.’ He was upset by the costs incurred by the Pentagon for troops transitioning from one gender to the other,” USA Today reports.

In a statement Tuesday, the Pentagon noted that the policy is not a complete ban and that transgender troops would continue to be treated with respect.

“The Department of Defense’s proposed policy is based on professional military judgment and will ensure that the U.S. armed forces remain the most lethal and combat-effective fighting force in the world,” Air Force Lt. Col. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokeswoman told USA Today.

Jennifer Levi of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders told the newspaper that some members will face discharge while the courts continue to decide the ban.

“The Trump administration’s cruel obsession with ridding our military of dedicated and capable service members because they happen to be transgender defies reason and cannot survive legal review,” Levi said.

USA Today notes that since becoming eligible Jan. 1 2018, dozens of transgender recruits have signed up for service, making them among the reported “several thousand transgender troops estimated to be serving in the active-duty force of more than 1 million, according to a Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon in 2016.”</s>The United States Supreme Court has approved the enforcement of President Trump's plan to ban certain transgender people from the military. The high court voted five votes to four in order to grant the Trump administration's request to lift injunctions blocking the Obama era policy, while challenges continue in lower courts. The policy prohibits 'transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition' from serving.</s>The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump’s broad restrictions on transgender people serving in the military to go into effect while the legal battle continues in lower courts.

The justices lifted nationwide injunctions that had kept the administration's policy from being implemented.

It reversed an Obama-administration rule that would have opened the military to transgender men and women, and instead barred those who identify with a gender different from the one assigned at birth and who are seeking to transition.

The court's five conservatives - Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito Jr., Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh - allowed the restrictions to go into effect while the court decides to whether to consider the merits of the case.

The liberal justices - Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan - would have kept the injunctions in place.

Trump surprised even his own military advisers in July 2017 when he announced a sweeping ban on transgender people's military service via Twitter. He cited what he viewed as the "tremendous medical costs and disruption." The administration's order reversed President Barack Obama's policy of allowing transgender men and women to serve openly and receive funding for sex-reassignment surgery.

Attorneys for active-duty service members went to court to block the policy shift, which could subject current transgender service members to discharge and deny them certain medical care.

The court rulings were met with another policy revision from then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who issued a plan to bar those from the military who identify with a gender different from their birth gender and who are seeking to transition. Mattis's plan makes exceptions, for instance, for about 900 transgender individuals who are already serving openly and for others who would serve in accordance with their birth gender.

While several lower courts have blocked the policy, the changes were persuasive to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which became the first appeals court to review the policy.

"The government took substantial steps to cure the procedural deficiencies" previously identified by a lower court, the panel said in a short order. "Although the Mattis Plan continues to bar many transgender persons from joining or serving in the military, the record indicates that the plan allows some transgender persons" previously barred to join and serve.

The policy is not a "blanket ban," the court concluded, because "not all transgender persons seek to transition to their preferred gender or have gender dysphoria."

The controversy over allowing transgender service members to serve openly has a long past.

The Obama administration opened the military to transgender service members in June 2016, focusing first on allowing those already in the service to remain in legally and then with providing them medical care. In announcing the policy change, then-defense secretary Ashton B. Carter said that the administration did not want "barriers unrelated to a person's qualification to serve" preventing the military from recruiting or retaining the best people available for the job.

The policy approved said that "not later than July 1, 2017," the Pentagon would update its medical standards to include people who have a history of gender dysphoria, the medical term for wanting to transition gender. It added that the Pentagon would begin taking transgender recruits in July 2017 for the first time as long as a doctor certified that they were mentally and emotionally stable over the previous 18 months.

Mattis, Trump's first defense secretary, delayed opening the military to transgender recruits on the eve of that deadline by another six months, citing a request from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for further study. In the meantime, the Pentagon would continue to treat transgender troops with dignity and respect, Mattis said in a memo. Advocates for transgender people decried the move, saying it already had been studied ad nauseam.

The situation was thrown into turmoil a few weeks later with Trump's tweet.

Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, released a memo the following day effectively stopping the military from making any changes until a new policy was adopted, and Mattis backed the move. Meanwhile, the president's ban was challenged in court.

Trump issued a presidential memorandum the following month that accused the Obama administration of allowing transgender military service without identifying a "sufficient basis" that doing so would not "hinter military effectiveness and lethality, disrupt unit cohesion, or tax military resources. He directed Mattis to have the Pentagon adopted a new ban similar to the military's former policy by March 23, 2018.

With legal battles still underway, Mattis wrote in a memo to the president that he was in favor of letting most transgender troops already in the military to stay, so long as they have not undergone gender reassignment surgery and are able to deploy across the world. Service members who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since the Obama administration ended the ban in 2016 should be allowed to continue serving, Mattis added, effectively advocating the grandfathering of anyone affected by Trump's ban.

But Mattis's view on bringing in additional transgender people as recruits was more closely aligned with the president's.

"By its very nature, military service requires sacrifice," Mattis said in the memo. "The men and women who serve voluntarily accept limitations on their personal liberties - freedom of speech, political activity, freedom of movement - in order to provide the military lethality and readiness necessary to ensure American citizens enjoy their personal freedoms to the fullest extent."

Federal judges required the military to begin allowing transgender recruits beginning in January 2018, and the Pentagon has not stood in the way of those rulings. Instead, it provided policy guidance to recruiters to explain how to enlist transgender men and women, and said those guidelines “shall remain in effect until expressly revoked.”
The U.S. Supreme Court allows, by a 5–4 vote, the Trump administration to begin implementing the policy that prohibits transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition from serving. Unresolved challenges remain in lower courts.