The Justice Department has asked the Supreme Court to allow the ban on transgender people in the military to go into effect pending appeal.

The administration already has a pending request for the Supreme Court to bypass the lower courts and take up a case concerning the ban, which has been blocked by lower courts.

Now the Department of Justice is taking it a step further. In a brief filed Thursday night Solicitor General Noel Francisco requests that if the Supreme Court declines to take up the case this term, the justices allow the Trump policy to go into effect while the case plays out in the lower courts.

The justices are likely to ask challengers for their response.

The policy, first announced by the President in July 2017 via Twitter and later officially released by Secretary of Defense James Mattis, blocks individuals who suffer from a condition known as gender dysphoria from serving with limited exceptions. It specifies that individuals without the condition can serve but only if they do so according to the sex they were assigned at birth. Read more via CNN