Transgender troops can remain in US military, but enlistment can be blocked, court rules

Cropped shot of a soldier wearing camouflage fatigues with an American flag for a patch. Photograph: PeopleImages/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Cropped shot of a soldier wearing camouflage fatigues with an American flag for a patch. Photograph: PeopleImages/Getty Images Transgender troops can remain in US military, but enlistment can be blocked, court rules Split decision deals blow to Trump administration’s anti-diversity agenda, calling the ban ‘arbitrary, and based on animus’ Transgender troops can remain in the US military, but the armed services can continue to block their enlistment, an appeals court ruled on Monday in a split decision with potentially significant consequences for the Trump administration’s anti-diversity agenda. The divided, majority opinion by a three-judge panel of the US court of appeals for Washington DC is expected to be challenged by the government. And the case is ultimately likely to reach the US supreme court. The ruling was held from going into immediate effect, allowing the administration time to ask the full appeals court to hear the case. But it represents a blunt rebuke of the US defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s implementation of Donald Trump’s January 2025 presidential order mandating the removal of hundreds of transgender service members. US strike on alleged drug boat kills three in eastern Pacific Read more Such banning of transgender people from the military is illegal and “both arbitrary, and based on animus”, Robert Wilkins, a circuit judge, wrote in the majority opinion. Monday’s decision mostly upholds a preliminary injunction issued by Ana Reyes, a district court judge, in March 2025 preventing the dismissal of six active-duty transgender people who are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. At the time, Reyes wrote: “The court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes. “We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.” Trump’s order had claimed the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life”. The order also argued that transgender service members’ sexual identity was harmful to military readiness. Hegseth subsequently issued a policy presumptively disqualifying people with gender dysphoria, a medical condition arising from a person’s distress related to feelings about their gender identity, from military service. The appeals court judges on Monday were ruling on the government’s appeal of Reyes’s injunction. They decided to narrow its scope to the estimated 1,000 members of the military who openly identify as trans – but not those who are seeking to join. “In this litigation, the government has not attempted to defend or provide any factual basis for these disparaging characterizations of American citizens,” Wilkins wrote, addin