A federal judge on Tuesday blocked President Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military.

“U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C., ruled that the ban violates the equal protection clause because it discriminates based on transgender status and sex,” NBC News stated.

Per NBC News:

Reyes said the ban “is soaked in animus.”

“Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she wrote.

She added, “Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them.”

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Reyes delayed the effect of her preliminary injunction until Friday to give the administration time to appeal it. She added in her order that the government “could have crafted a policy that balances the Nation’s need for a prepared military and Americans’ right to equal protection.”

“They still can,” she said. “The Military Ban, however, is not that policy. The Court therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day.”

Fox News reports:

Transgender individuals were considered unfit for U.S. military service until the DOD changed its policy during former President Barack Obama’s second term.

In her 79-page ruling, Reyes in part cites Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Hamilton” to justify blocking the ban on transgender troops.

“Women were ‘included in the sequel’ when passage of the Nineteenth Amendment granted them the right to vote in 1920,” Reyes wrote in the footnotes, adding, “That right is one of the many that thousands of transgender persons serve to protect.”

Reyes said plaintiffs “face a violation of their constitutional rights, which constitutes irreparable harm.”

“Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” the judge wrote, adding that the defendants, on the other hand, “have not shown they will be burdened by continuing the status quo pending this litigation, and avoiding constitutional violations is always in the public interest.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller condemned Reyes’ ruling on X, writing, “District court judges have now decided they are in command of the Armed Forces…is there no end to this madness?”

 

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