On Friday, two more federal courts joined the choir of judges who have rejected President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military, including a ruling in a fourth lower court and a second appeals court. All of the courts have held not only that the ban cannot be enforced, but that the Pentagon must revert to the status quo, including beginning to allow trans people to enlist starting January 1, just over a week from now.
In a case out of California (Stockman v. Trump), U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal, an Obama appointee, became the fourth federal judge to rule against Trump’s ban. Because three decisions preceded his own, he borrowed greatly from their reasoning, but offered a few of his own swipes against the ban.
Bernal’s decision focuses in on the way the Trump administration attempted to create confusion about what the ban actually means in an attempt to argue that the plaintiffs, which include three young trans people hoping to enlist and several servicemembers serving both openly and not openly, faced no clear risk of injury. Speaking about the potential recruits, Bernal said that the likelihood they face a barrier to joining is “concrete, particularized, imminent, and not at all hypothetical.” And as to the current service members who worry about losing their jobs, Bernal said their “fear is appropriately born out of President Defendant Trump’s Twitter Proclamation, the Presidential Memorandum, and the Interim Guidance.” Read more via Think Progress