On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a lower court injunction on the Trump administration’s policy disqualifying trans-identifying individuals from military service.
In its 6-3 decision, the high court granted the Trump Justice Department’s application to stay a nationwide injunction issued by a Bush appointee on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington that prevented the aforementioned policy from taking effect. Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the administration’s request.
According to the one-page order released on Tuesday, the lower court’s injunction is paused while the case is on appeal at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The high court’s stay will also remain in place should the 9th Circuit rule against the Trump administration and the federal government subsequently ask SCOTUS to review the merits of the case.
The stay will end if SCOTUS declines to take up the case. If the high court agrees to consider it, however, “the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgement” from the high court.
A week after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order declaring that the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria” is “inconsistent” with the “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.” The directive instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to update the military’s medical standards within 60 days of the order’s issuance to reflect the president’s guidance, which Hegseth did in early February.
In its emergency request asking SCOTUS to block the lower court’s universal injunction, the Trump administration argued that the issuance of the injunction “usurp[ed] the Executive Branch’s authority to determine who may serve in the Nation’s armed forces.” It also noted that the lower court did this despite the Supreme Court “previously staying injunctions against” the first Trump administration’s military “trans” policy, which the agency contended is “materially indistinguishable” from the one adopted by the Pentagon earlier this year.
“The district court’s injunction cannot be squared with the substantial deference that the Department’s professional military judgments are owed. Nor can the court’s injunction be squared with this Court’s decisions to stay the injunctions against the [2018] Mattis policy,” the application reads. “In staying those injunctions, this Court necessarily determined that the government was likely to succeed in defending the Mattis policy on the merits. Yet the district court failed to identify any relevant difference in the 2025 policy that would justify a different conclusion here.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
