President Donald Trump is continuing to battle back against the wave of Democrat-led lawfare even targeting his actions as commander-in-chief, a heretofore authority given to presidents that, until now, had been considered legally off-limits and sacrosanct. On Thursday, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to step in after a lower court temporarily blocked his ban on transgender individuals serving in the military.
The request follows a decision last Friday by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which denied the administration’s request for a stay on the injunction. The three-judge panel—Wallace Tashima (appointed by Clinton), John Owens (appointed by Obama), and Roopali Desai (appointed by Biden)—rejected the motion. In January, Trump signed two executive orders: the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” order. These directives instruct the U.S. military to operate without regard to race or sex preferences and to eliminate the use of what the orders describe as “gender ideology” and non-traditional pronoun mandates.
U.S. District Judge Benjamin Hale Settle of Washington State issued a nationwide preliminary injunction last month. Settle, appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the arguments presented by the Trump Justice Department were unconvincing, though that shouldn’t have been a factor in a decision that is solely the president’s to make. The Trump administration appealed the decision, but the D.C. Circuit Court denied its motion to stay Settle’s injunction. “Appellants have not demonstrated that they will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay,” the appeals court said in a Friday evening order.
Now, Trump’s DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and block the lower court’s ruling. In a filing on Thursday, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to lift the lower court’s injunction and allow the military to disqualify from service “individuals who have gender dysphoria or have undergone medical treatments related to gender dysphoria.”
Absent a stay, the district court’s universal injunction will remain in place for the duration of further review in the Ninth Circuit and in this Court – a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the Nation’s interests,” lawyers for the Trump administration argued.
‘Gender dysphoria’ — or, more accurately, confusion about one’s own gender — is, at a minimum, a mental health issue. And while we’re on that subject, other Americans who suffer mental health issues are not permitted to serve in the military, either. Nor are entire categories of Americans with physical limitations and health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, blindness, chronic obesity, and so forth. But none of those conditions meet the standard of “left-wing cause of the day,” so that’s why they’re not being argued in court — yet.
If Trump loses this fight, and he definitely should not, then it’ll be another instance of the Judicial Branch stealing an authority from the Executive Branch — and something that the Legislative Branch, if they can find time to stay in Washington long enough, will have to address via the next defense spending bill.