A Pentagon policy illegally banned transgender troops from military service, a divided panel of federal appeal court judges ruled on Monday in another legal setback for President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda.
The majority opinion — by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit — held that the Trump administration’s policy was designed to exclude people from the military based on their gender identity.
The ban will remain in effect for now. The U.S. Supreme Court let it go through last year as litigation continues to play out, and the appeals court put their own ruling on hold to allow for appeals. It would apply to plaintiffs serving in the miliary, but not those seeking to join. So the military would be able to prevent new transgender people from enlisting.
The appeals court panel’s 2-1 decision largely upholds a March 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C. Reyes concluded that Trump’s executive order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.
The administration appealed after Reyes issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys for several transgender people who are active-duty service members and others seeking to join the military. The appeal court’s majority decided that the injunction should be narrowed to the plaintiffs currently serving in the military but not those trying to enlist.
Another lawsuit challenging the ban was filed in Washington state and led to a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs challenging the policy in that case
It’s not illegal if you don’t do anything about it.
The ban will remain in effect for now.
That’s exactly what this administration has been doing and doesn’t care about judges’ rulings when they can just keep doing it.
Why does everyone have to be so mean to trans people? We haven’t done shit to anyone.
The very short answer? Insecurity.
The slightly longer answer?
Many people get their sense of right and wrong, their morality, their entire identity exclusively from those around them, and never from themselves. They don’t even think they are capable of having any of that themselves; mainly because they’ve been told since they could barely misunderstand language that that’s impossible.
If your society disallows personal identity and forces you to pick from a preselected and made set of options then anyone not fitting those options is doing something wrong. Many of them legitimately do not understand why they dislike trans people or gay people or just people that don’t fit into the narrow version of society they grew up understanding was the limit of acceptable existence, they just know “it ain’t right.”
The existence of the Other, especially an Other that is incredibly proud and out about their existence, one who is not ashamed to not fit into any of the available options they’ve been lead to believe solely exist, physically causes them pain. Because it forces them to question, even subconsciously, if whether or not the entirety of their known existence is actually wrong. Because (statistically) that question was beat out of them at an early age.
Every child, at some point in development, encounters someone outside their “tribe” that they do not understand. They look to those around them for guidance, of course, but if in an independent environment (i.e. a sheltered white child meeting a black child at a playground mostly unsupervised) the child will show curiosity and then acceptance assuming the encounter doesn’t end in any perceived danger. That child automatically accepted the Other into their “tribe” without question, because without outside input and without any sense of danger, there’s no reason not to; however if that child did have someone in their ‘tribe’ close by that disapproved, or worse yet explained why they disapproved, that child will associate that interaction as ‘outside the tribe’ and develop discriminatory beliefs because that new person is not how “they should be.” They do not take any of the roles in the tribe that have been explained.
Now modern humans in modern times can break out of “tribal” thought. In fact most will try to at some point, early in their childhood, then again in their teen years, and finally if and when they are placed independently in a new environment in their young adult years (the college effect). But if there’s someone there at every turning point stopping them from gaining that independence, they will just withdraw and stay in that simplistic world view.
They are a {straight} {man/woman} who does {tribe-approved work role for gender} and {insert tribe approved weekly cultural activity}. If you differ, you’re a danger to yourself and others, and you must be corrected. Because obviously someone taught you to be different. And that someone that taught you was wrong because they themselves were different, and so on, back to {insert cultural reference about warring tribes (i.e. Lilith v Eve)}. You might not even be human.
The Whitehouse in response to this: “Fuck you, we’re just going to ignore this decision!”
The federal legislative and judiciary branches: “O-okay then, I guess. 🥺/☺️”
Finally some good news
The ban will remain in effect for now.
Not really good news until they actually stop this and do something to make the affected people whole again and then some. They invented a new class of ignored, fucked-over veterans, many of whom are probably now homeless or dead.
