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The Advocate explains the Trump trans military ban and where it stands.
Two federal judges have blocked the Pentagon's attempt to kick out trans service members.
The Trump administration’s latest attempt to erase transgender people from public life hit a major roadblock when two federal judges ruled that its ban on transgender military service is likely unconstitutional. In a scathing opinion, Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes called the policy issued by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext,” blocking its enforcement. In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle of the Western District of Washington issued a nationwide injunction halting the ban, writing that it was “not an especially close question.” But how did we get here? And what happens next?
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President Donald Trump first announced a ban on transgender military service during his first term in 2017—on Twitter. The move reversed an Obama-era policy that had allowed transgender service members to serve openly and came without any consultation with military leaders. The administration claimed that allowing trans people to serve would be too expensive and disruptive. But the facts never backed that up.
Related: Federal judge dismantles Trump's trans military ban in explosive hearing
After fierce legal battles, the Trump administration modified the policy, allowing some transgender service members to remain but effectively shutting the door on new recruits. President Joe Biden overturned the ban in 2021, restoring open service. But when Trump returned to office, he revived the ban, issuing Executive Order 14183, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” on January 27, to bar transgender individuals from serving and to begin removing those already enlisted.
On January 28, GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed Talbott v. Trump on behalf of 20 transgender people—both active service members and those trying to enlist. Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, and Shannon Minter, legal director at NCLR, led the charge against the policy. Their argument was simple: This ban wasn’t about military readiness—it was about discrimination, plain and simple.
Related: Meet the transgender Army lieutenant who is challenging Donald Trump's military ban
Among the plaintiffs was Clayton McCallister, a 24-year-old Air Force recruit from Knoxville, Tennessee, who had spent over a year preparing to serve as a Pararescue operator—a highly demanding military role. After successfully enlisting in January, his plans were upended when his March deployment was suddenly canceled because of Trump’s executive order. McCallister, who had left his civilian job in preparation for military service, found himself in a state of uncertainty, struggling to support his wife and newly adopted daughter.
“It’s important to me just to be here and to be a part of it,” McCallister told The Advocate. “I’m standing here with a lot of people that have a lot more experience than I do, and I’m just grateful to the legal team and everyone that’s put their story out there to help the fight.”
He emphasized that his dream was simply to work hard. “I just want to go out there and serve my country, help other people, and do something bigger than me. Anyone willing and able and capable of doing that should be allowed to.”
Among the other plaintiffs were Major Erica Vandal, a decorated field artillery officer with nearly 14 years of service, and Second Lieutenant Nicholas Talbott, a member of the Army Reserve who spent almost a decade fighting for his right to serve.
Related: Pentagon says it will start kicking transgender people out of military this month
Vandal, 36, has served honorably for over 13 years in the U.S. Army, earning commendations, including a Bronze Star during a deployment to Afghanistan. She currently serves as a Brigade Fire Support Officer, leading and certifying over 70 personnel. Her military career has been a lifelong commitment, following in the footsteps of her father, a retired three-star general. “We remain trained, ready, and deployable. We just want the opportunity to continue our legacy of honorable service to our country,” she said.
Talbott, 31, endured years of setbacks due to shifting military policies on transgender service members. A sociology graduate with a background in global security studies, Talbott had trained for military service through ROTC before being barred from enlisting under Trump’s initial ban. After Biden lifted the policy, he finally took his enlistment oath in 2024 and graduated with honors from Officer Candidate School. “My military service is something that I’ve spent the greater portion of my adult life working toward,” he told The Advocate. “I can’t even fathom what my family has been feeling, sitting on the sidelines, watching me go through this, trying to be as supportive as possible.”
Before issuing her ruling, Reyes presided over a tense, five-hour hearing where she relentlessly questioned the Trump administration’s justification for banning transgender service members. Department of Justice attorney Jason Manion, a Federalist Society-affiliated lawyer and former aide to Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, struggled to defend the administration’s position under Reyes’ scrutiny.
She accused the government of "cherry-picking" and "egregiously misquoting" scientific evidence and noted that the Pentagon’s own studies revealed that transgender service members have lower rates of disability incidents compared to their cisgender counterparts. When Manion admitted he hadn’t read the studies he was citing, Reyes paused proceedings for a 30-minute recess, firmly instructing government attorneys, “Get out the studies. We’re going to go over them.”
Returning from the break, Reyes systematically dismantled the government’s rationale, pointing out that service members who require insulin or other hormone therapies deploy routinely, yet similar treatments for transgender personnel were inexplicably deemed too complicated.
Related: Federal judge blocks Trump's transgender military ban
Reyes also took issue with Hegseth’s public statements, in which he questioned transgender troops’ “integrity” and “warrior ethos.” When Manion attempted to downplay these remarks as “shorthand,” Reyes fired back, “Do you think you can say one thing in public and another thing in court?”
Reyes’ ruling wasn’t just a rejection of the administration’s arguments—it was a full-scale takedown. In her 79-page opinion, she stated that the ban was “a solution in search of a problem” and lambasted the administration for its lack of evidence. Reyes noted that the government’s justification was rooted in misinformation, prejudice, and a fundamental misunderstanding of military operations.
“The Military Ban, like past efforts to exclude marginalized groups, rests on irrational prejudice,” Reyes wrote, drawing parallels between the treatment of transgender troops and historical discrimination against racial minorities, women, and gay and lesbian service members.
The court found that the cost of providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender service members was minimal compared to overall military health care expenditures, with Reyes highlighting that the Department of Defense spends significantly more on erectile dysfunction medications like Viagra than on transgender medical care. Furthermore, the court determined that transgender troops were as employable and deployable as their cisgender counterparts, contradicting the administration’s claims.
She further pointed out that the administration’s attempts to paint transgender service members as weak and unfit were not only offensive but factually incorrect. “The policy brands transgender troops as weak, dishonorable, undisciplined, boastful, selfish liars who are mentally and physically unfit to serve,” she wrote. “This is not policy. This is discrimination.”
Though Reyes issued a preliminary injunction blocking the ban, her order was quickly met with pushback. On March 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted the Trump administration’s emergency request for an administrative stay, temporarily halting enforcement of Reyes’ ruling while the court considers the government’s appeal.
"The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits,” the order stated. The D.C. Circuit gave plaintiffs until April 1 to respond and the DOJ until April 3 to reply. "If any action occurs that negatively impacts service members under the Hegseth Policy and MDI Guidance before the court lifts the administrative stay, the plaintiffs may file a motion to lift the administrative stay, and the court will consider it expeditiously," the court added.
Related: Trump administration admits to judge it doesn’t know how many troops are trans—or why it’s banning them
On the same day, Settle issued a separate nationwide preliminary injunction in Commander Emily Shilling et al. v. United States, blocking the same Trump-era ban. Settle’s ruling prevents the administration from implementing Executive Order 14183 and the associated Military Department Identification guidance targeting transgender troops.
“The government’s unrelenting reliance on deference to military judgment is unjustified in the absence of any evidence,” Settle wrote. “Any evidence that such service over the past four years harmed any of the military’s inarguably critical aims would be front and center. But there is none.”
The Shilling suit was filed by Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation on behalf of seven active-duty transgender service members, one transgender person seeking to enlist, and the Seattle-based Gender Justice League.
“These efforts to stall the preliminary injunction from going into effect burden military families with a crushing amount of pressure,” Levi said. Minter added that the government’s tactics “seem designed to muddy the waters.”
For now, thanks to Settle’s order, transgender service members can continue to serve and enlist nationwide, even as the D.C. Circuit weighs the government’s appeal in Talbott. The DOJ has also appealed Settle’s ruling to San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and requested an immediate emergency stay, but the court has not yet ruled on that motion.
“We are going to show up, we are going to do our jobs, we are going to stay mission-focused and combat-ready,” Talbott said. “Because at the end of the day, that’s really the only thing that matters.”
