A federal appeals court ruled on Monday against the Trump administration’s policy of barring transgender troops from the military, finding the policy was arbitrary and implemented with animus.
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit found 2-1 that the Department of War’s January 2025 policy, which held that people with gender dysphoria are unfit to serve in the military, is unlawful. The panel’s ruling on the liberal-leaning court limited its scope to the current transgender-identifying service members who were part of the lawsuit, and the Trump administration’s policy is still in effect for transgender-identifying people not already in the military 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,” U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in his ruling for the panel. “Indeed, the government has not contested that the Plaintiff-Appellees who are currently serving (and who have collectively earned more than 80 commendations) have served honorably and pose no threat to national security, even though they happen to be transgender and have suffered from gender dysphoria.”
Wilkins also accused the administration of targeting people who disagree with it on gender ideology and stated that the policy appears motivated by a “bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”
“As such, at this preliminary stage, I conclude that the Hegseth Policy is both arbitrary and based upon animus, and for those reasons the Policy violates Plaintiff-Appellees’ constitutional right to equal protection of the law,” Wilkins said, referring to the policy instituted under current War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
U.S. Circuit Judge Judith Rogers, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, joined the majority with Wilkins, also penning her own concurring opinion. In her opinion, Rogers said that she would also have halted the DOW’s policy for transgender-identifying people trying to join the military, which Wilkins declined to do at this point in the litigation.
The lone dissenter was U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, an appointee of President Donald Trump, who argued that the court erred by intervening in a military decision left to Congress and the executive branch, rather than the judiciary. He wrote in his lengthy dissent that the majority discounted the “need for deference” toward the executive branch for military personnel decisions and argued that the majority did “not explain which part of the military’s justification is unreasonable.”
“‘We know that from top to bottom of the Army the complaint is often made, and sometimes with justification, that there is discrimination, favoritism or other objectionable handling of men. But judges are not given the task of running the Army.’ Only the Executive and Congress are responsible for system-wide military judgments about the composition of the armed forces,” Walker wrote in his dissent.
“The Supreme Court has never assumed that role for itself,” he said. “Neither has the D.C. Circuit. Not until today.”
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The ruling can be appealed to either the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit or the Supreme Court. The Justice Department is likely to appeal the Monday ruling in some form.
With transgender issues, the Trump administration has fared better as the lawsuits have gone higher in federal courts. The Supreme Court allowed the transgender troop ban to go into effect via its emergency docket in a different lawsuit last year, and months later, the high court allowed the administration’s rule mandating that passports must reflect a person’s biological sex, rather than his or her gender identity, also via its emergency docket.