An advocacy organization for post-9/11 veterans was critical of a that will allow the Trump administration's ban on transgender military members to proceed while the legality of the ban is fought in court. “Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court doesn’t just fail transgender Americans who’ve volunteered to serve their country, but a nation that depends on volunteers to serve in the ranks of its military and fight its wars,” CEO Allison Jaslow, an Iraq War veteran, said in a news release. “The just thing to do would have been to allow the actions by the Trump Administration to be litigated in the courts, while also allowing committed Americans to still serve their country as they’ve been allowed to for nearly a decade.
Instead, the brave Americans who’ve been senselessly targeted by their Commander-in-Chief for the sake of scoring political points got dealt another blow by the Court, and U.S. military readiness will suffer as a result." President Donald Trump issued an that directed the defense secretary to issue new guidance for a transgender ban. The order argued that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.” The Defense Department in February to adhere to Trump’s order, which has been challenged in court.
Transgender service members and legal rights groups on their behalf . Emily Shilling, a transgender service member and a commander in the Navy who has flown 60 combat missions in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, is one of the parties in the lawsuit. A U.S. district judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction blocking implementation of the transgender military ban in late March.
The Trump administration called on the Supreme Court to stay the preliminary injunction. Tuesday, the Supreme Court granting the Trump administration’s request, though the underlying lawsuit has yet to be resolved. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth following the Supreme Court’s order.
Hegseth also criticized “dudes in dresses” while to special operations troops in Florida. IAVA, meanwhile, said it “stands in support of our nation’s transgender troops and veterans–and in support of equality always.” There aren’t a lot of transgender people serving in the military, though estimates vary. A 2016 , last year by the Congressional Research Service, estimated there were between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender service members in the active component.
A found there were nearly 9,000 transgender troops in active duty. The found that just 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary overall. Removing less than 10,000 troops from a service of over 1 million might not sound like a big hit to force strength.
But Courtney Manning, who has led research on military recruitment and readiness at the American Security Project, that the military could really feel the pain if transgender troops are pulled out of critical-skill positions, such as cybersecurity and drone operators. “These are people who the U.S. military just can't afford to lose,” Manning said in January, shortly after Trump issued his executive order.
