A federal appeals court has temporarily reinstated the Trump administration’s policy barring service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria, citing broad military discretion.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Monday reinstated the Trump administration’s ban on troops with gender dysphoria, pausing a lower court’s injunction that had blocked enforcement of the policy.
“The military is entitled to substantial deference in setting risk tolerances and evaluating conflicting evidence bearing on matters like force composition,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas in the 2–1 decision issued Dec. 9. Katsas said the evidence supporting what he referred to as the Hegseth Policy—named for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who implemented the ban—was “more than sufficient to support the choices made.”
The decision grants a stay pending appeal of a Washington district court ruling that had previously halted the policy. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao joined the majority opinion, while Circuit Judge Cornelia Pillard issued a sharp dissent accusing the military of acting on prejudice rather than evidence.
“The majority’s decision makes it all but inevitable that thousands of qualified servicemembers will lose careers they have built over decades,” Pillard wrote in her dissent. “We should not accord deference to the military when the Department itself carelessly relied on no more than blatant animus.”
The case centers on equal protection under the Fifth Amendment, which U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes had cited in her earlier ruling that found the ban discriminatory. In her decision, Reyes quoted Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 2020 opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, writing that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”
However, the appeals court said the district court failed to give the military adequate deference, particularly in policies relating to combat readiness and risk assessment. Katsas wrote that the military’s judgment “is likely constitutional” because it reflects “legitimate military interests” such as unit cohesion, medical standards, and safety in physical training.
He noted that “in physically violent training and competition, such as boxing and combatives, pitting biological females against biological males who identify as female, and vice versa, could present a serious safety risk.”
Judge Pillard countered that the Department of Defense already has mechanisms to assess medical fitness on a case-by-case basis. “The military has robust policies in place to remove servicemembers who pose a threat to readiness and lethality,” she wrote, emphasizing that transgender servicemembers can be evaluated under the same Disability Evaluation System as all others.
The ruling comes as the Supreme Court continues to consider cases involving gender identity and constitutional rights, including its recent decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on the use of hormone treatments for minors. The high court has not yet ruled on the constitutionality of the troop ban itself but has previously stayed injunctions in similar cases.
For now, the D.C. Circuit’s decision means the Hegseth Policy remains in effect, marking a significant legal victory for the Trump administration as the broader constitutional battle continues.
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