Supreme Court Allows Military To Implement Trans Ban; The Hill Hardest Hit

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the Defense Department could begin implementing a ban on trans-identifying service members, prompting The Hill to publish a response that read more like a partisan temper tantrum than an unbiased report.

In the opening paragraph, the authors complained that the Supreme Court — which is, by definition, the nation’s highest court and the final say in all legal matters — was somehow “undermining” the [obviously correct] decisions that had been issued previously by lower courts. The paragraph went on to assert that President Donald Trump’s administration had “broadly sought to restrict transgender rights.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Trump’s administration to begin enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military, undermining two lower court decisions and handing a victory to an administration that has broadly sought to restrict transgender rights.

Several paragraphs detailing the decision — which thus far only lifts the injunction on the ban’s implementation — and the fact that “the Court’s three liberal justices publicly dissented” followed. And then the authors pivoted, loading up on the loaded language and turning the attack on the policy itself.

First, they took aim at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s argument that trans-identifying individuals, particularly those who are dependent upon medical treatments such as cross-sex hormones or surgical procedures and follow-ups, are considered non-deployable and therefore not mission-capable. Instead of presenting evidence refuting Hegseth’s point, the authors attacked the argument itself — and claimed that it was the same logic used to bar black, gay, and female troops from serving in the past.

The Trump administration’s policy states that transgender individuals cannot meet the “rigorous standards” needed to serve, and allowing their participation threatens military readiness and unit cohesion, an argument long used to keep marginalized groups, including Black and gay people and women, from serving in the military.

What followed after that was a series of comments from critics of the ban:

• Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign: “By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the Court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice.”
• 32 trans-identifying service members: Allowing the administration to enforce its ban on trans military service would cause transgender troops “reputational, professional, and constitutional harm that can never be undone.”
• Attorneys for seven active duty trans-identifying service members: “An unprecedented degree of animus towards transgender people animates and permeates the Ban: it is based on the shocking proposition that transgender people do not exist,” they wrote. “Along with other recent executive orders targeting transgender people for opprobrium and discrimination, the Ban claims that having a gender identity that differs from one’s birth sex is a ‘falsehood’ or ‘false claim.’”

The article concluded with the text of Trump’s executive order barring trans-identifying service members, using it solely as a set-up for the authors’ assessment that it was “one of several to deny the existence of trans, nonbinary and intersex people.”