Judge Scathes Trump Lawyers Defending Military Trans Ban
The federal judge considering a temporary injunction of President Trump’s order to ban trans service members from the U.S. military delivered a scathing rebuke to lawyers defending the order on Wednesday.
“Standing here today, you do not understand the scope of the ban,” U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes told them. “You don’t understand the scope of the symptoms of gender dysphoria…You don’t know the answer to what ‘attempted to transition’ means.”
The memo implies that trans soldiers are selfish, dishonorable, deceitful, undisciplined, and a threat to military effectiveness.
At one point, Reyes gave them 30 minutes to get their act together before resuming the five-hour proceeding.
The hearing addressed documents related to Trump’s January 27 executive order imposing a blanket ban on trans service members in the military, including a Pentagon memo issued in February that states “the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
Jason Manion, a lawyer for the administration, tried clarifying the scope of the claim, saying the policy doesn’t address all trans people.
Judge Reyes then cited a Defense Department post on X from February 27 which declared, “Transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the same post from his official account.
“Do you think you can say one thing in public…and say another thing in court?” Reyes asked. “This wasn’t some off-the-cuff remark at a cocktail party.”
The judge asked if Hegseth was using “loose language.” Manion countered it was “shorthand.”
“I’m not going to speculate that he was just being sloppy when he said that. I’m going to take him at his word,” Reyes replied.
The judge then questioned government attorneys about a literature review and studies cited in the February memo, documents she’d previously asked them to come prepared to discuss at the day’s hearing. Justice Department attorney Jason Lynch confessed he hadn’t read the materials, which led Reyes to pause the proceedings.
Referring to the memo, Reyes later suggested officials “cherrypicked” parts of a study cited in it and “ignored” the context by not including comparisons of trans service members’ performance to their straight peers’.
“We can’t say anything about whether this data is meaningful without any point of comparison,” Reyes said.
Without context, the data is “meaningless,” she added.
“I wouldn’t say it’s meaningless, it’s some data,” the government attorney argued.
The original study showed that a group of trans service members were deployed longer than a comparison group of non-transgender service members who were diagnosed with depression, the judge said.
“This will tell us that [trans service members] are actually better suited to stay in service,” Reyes said. Service members with gender dysphoria suffer more suicidal ideation not for biological reasons, the study showed, but because they face more stigma and discrimination, Reyes said.
The judge also told the lawyers the government undermined its own argument that trans service members disrupt unit cohesion, citing the plaintiffs’ evidence that former military officials hadn’t seen any examples demonstrating it.
Lead plaintiff Nic Talbott, “like every other service member, has been deemed physically and mentally fit for duty, has no accommodation, has had no issues with deployability, and has more service awards than you and I have books in our library,” Reyes said.
Each of the plaintiffs’ service records is “remarkable,” the judge continued.
“You’re going to get rid of all these very qualified people who the military has spent millions of dollars into training specialized jobs for no other reason than they have had gender dysphoria or they transition,” she added.
Reyes is expected to hand down her decision on an injunction next week.
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