LeGaL stands with transgender troops as SCOTUS allows Trump's hateful military ban to go into effect
BREAKING: Today, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the challenge to Trump's discriminatory transgender military ban, while at the same time allowing Trump to enforce it. The ban will now be allowed to take effect while the case proceeds through the lower courts.
From LeGaL's Executive Director Eric Lesh:
"This Supreme Court order is misguided and unjust. The brave transgender troops who courageously serve, and wish to serve, their country deserve respect from our government. This action by the Supreme Court puts them at risk. We will continue to stand with the transgender community. We fight alongside the civil rights organizations that are challenging this hateful and discriminatory ban."
From LeGaL Board President Kristen Browde:
“This ruling puts at grave risk thousands of brave American military personnel who have been doing their jobs, protecting this country, with distinction, and does so simply out of the bigotry and political posturing of an administration which has consistently made a mockery of the concept of equality under the law.
The pretexts offered by the government for this policy do not even rise to the level of absurdity, and we can only hope that the lower courts quickly conclude litigation on the issue, allowing for a petition for certiorari, which would once again stay the administration’s continuing rush to discriminate."    Â
Read about the SCOTUS challenge to the transgender military ban in LeGaL's LGBT Law Notes.
From LeGaL Founder and Friend, Prof. Art Leonard:
The Court has granted the Solicitor General's motion to stay the preliminary injunction against implementation of the transgender military ban in the two cases out of the 9th Circuit, Karnoski and Stockman, pending a ruling by the 9th Circuit on the government's appeal from the district judges' refusal to dissolve the preliminary injunctions.
That's a complicated sentence. What it means is that as of now there is only ONE preliminary injunction in effect against implementation of the policy - It was issued in 2017 by a now-retired U.S. district judge in Baltimore, the case was reassigned to a new judge last June, and the government's motion to dissolve that injunction is still pending before the new judge (whose ruling last summer on a discovery motion seemed to signal the likelihood that he would keep the injunction in place, but who knows?). The Court did not rule on the motion from the D.C. case, because the D.C. Circuit took care of that for them by reversing and remanding that case early this month. Also, the petitions for certiorari in both cases were denied. * * *