Trump Administration Tries to Fast-Track the Reversal of Obama Transgender Military Policy

The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to bypass lower courts and take up a case involving the military’s proposed ban on most transgender military members.

The military’s proposed policy would prohibit service by those “who require or have undergone gender transition,” according to NPR.

Opponents of the ban, including GLAD and Lambda Legal, filed suit in federal court seeking to have the proposed ban blocked. The military, under the Obama administration, changed rules to allow transgender personnel to serve.  

“This is simply one more attempt by a reckless Trump administration to push through a discriminatory policy,” Jennifer Levi, the Transgender Rights Project director at GLAD, said in a statement. “The policy flies in the face of military research and dozens of top military experts.”

But the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to fast-track the suit because current policy -- adopted during the Obama administration -- harms the military.  

“[T]he military has concluded [the policy] poses a threat to ‘readiness, good order and discipline, sound leadership, and unit cohesion,’ which ‘are essential to military effectiveness and lethality,’” the request to the high court reads. 

Concerns over privacy also are an issue, the Department of Justice argues.

“The military maintains separate berthing, bathroom, and shower facilities for each sex,” the department’s petition reads. “The Department was concerned that allowing individuals who retained the anatomy of their biological sex to use the facilities of their preferred gender ‘would invade the expectations of privacy’ of the other servicemembers sharing those facilities.”

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.

Photo courtesy: Etereuti/Pixabay