Divided Supreme Court allows Trump administration to begin enforcing ban on

CNN
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The Supreme Court said Tuesday that the Trump administration can begin immediately enforcing a ban on transgender service members in the military.

The decision is a major victory for President Donald Trump in his effort to get the high court to unlock various parts of his second-term agenda that have been held up by lower courts reviewing scores of legal challenges to his policies.

As is often the case in emergency rulings, the court did not explain its reasoning. The three liberal justices publicly dissented from the decision, but also did not explain their position.

During the president’s first term, the high court permitted Trump to enforce a similar – yet slightly more permissive – ban on trans service members. That prohibition was later reversed by President Joe Biden.

Under the new ban, “service members who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria will be processed for separation from military service,” according to a memo outlining the policy.

The Pentagon will also not allow transgender Americans to join any branch of the military.

It’s unclear exactly how many transgender individuals serve in the military; in 2018, an independent research institute estimated there were 14,000 transgender troops serving.

A senior defense official previously told CNN there are 4,240 service members across active-duty, reserve and the National Guard with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, defined as the psychological distress an individual feels when their gender identity differs from their gender at birth. But not every transgender individual has gender dysphoria.

Days after taking office in January, Trump signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to implement its own policies that say transgender service members are incompatible with military service. The government had argued that continuing to permit trans individuals to serve in the US would negatively affect, among other things, the military’s lethality, readiness and cohesion.

But federal judges reviewing legal challenges to the policy concluded that it violated the constitutional rights of transgender Americans.

In the case appealed to the justices on an emergency basis, US District Judge Benjamin Settle, sitting at a courthouse in Washington state, said the administration “fails to contend with the reality that transgender service members have served openly for at least four years under (policies from previous administrations) without any discernable harm to military readiness, cohesion, order, or discipline.”

“It provides no evidence to counter plaintiffs’ showing that open transgender…