A divided federal appeals court handed down a split ruling on transgender military policy, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth answered with four words.

See you at SCOTUS.

On June 1, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decided Nicholas Talbott, et al. v. United States, No. 25-5087.

The 2-1 panel kept the War Department blocked from removing transgender troops who are currently serving, while at the same time clearing the way for President Trump’s administration to keep enforcing restrictions on new recruits as the case moves forward.

The case centers on Executive Order 14183, which President Trump signed on January 27, 2025, titled Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.

The court was also reviewing the implementing Defense Department guidance the opinion calls the Hegseth Policy, named for the former Defense Secretary now redesignated as Secretary of War.

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Judge Robert Wilkins announced the judgment. Senior Judge Judith Rogers concurred in part and dissented in part, and Judge Justin Walker dissented outright.

The majority went out of its way to attack the administration’s policy as targeting a politically unpopular group, claiming the rule was driven by animus rather than military judgment.

You can read the panel’s reasoning straight from the official opinion published by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit:

In this litigation, the government has not attempted to defend or provide any factual basis for these disparaging characterizations of American citizens.

Indeed, the government has not contested that the Plaintiff-Appellees who are currently serving have served honorably and pose no threat to national security, even though they happen to be transgender and have suffered from gender dysphoria.

Instead, the government contends that this case is solely about whether, pursuant to the Hegseth Policy, the military can disqualify persons from military service because they have gender dysphoria, a mental health condition.

But the record shows that the purpose of the Hegseth Policy is to target applicants and servicemembers who express what the Administration believes is a “false gender identity,” and the Policy goes far beyond disqualifying persons currently or recently suffering from gender dysphoria.

Some of those disqualifications are completely unexplained and have no reasonable justification.

The sharp contrast to the Mattis Policy, adopted in the first Trump Administration, which allowed servicemembers who were transgender or who had suffered from gender dysphoria to remain in the military, appears to be driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group: persons who identify as transgender.

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As such, at this preliminary stage, I conclude that the Hegseth Policy is both arbitrary and based upon animus, and for those reasons the Policy violates Plaintiff-Appellees’ constitutional right to equal protection of the law.

These Plaintiff-Appellees consist both of active-duty service members and those desiring to enlist.

Under the Hegseth Policy, those Plaintiff-Appellees currently serving in the military—who have been honorably serving for many years—now face expulsion.

In a similar vein, in accordance with the Hegseth Policy, those Plaintiff-Appellees desiring to enlist and who have applied for admission to the military are now excluded from accession.

As a result, and for separate reasons, Judge Rogers and I vote to affirm the District Court’s preliminary injunction enjoining the Hegseth Policy as it relates to those Plaintiff-Appellees already in the military, while Judge Walker and I vote to vacate the preliminary injunction as it relates to the Plaintiff-Appellees seeking accession into the military.

That is the same reasoning Judge Walker rejected in dissent, arguing that courts lack the authority and the expertise to second-guess military decisions of this kind.

He has a point. Setting the standards for who serves in uniform is the job of the commander in chief and the Pentagon, not a panel of appellate judges declaring a readiness policy unconstitutional.

The split outcome means the practical effect lands in two parts.

Currently serving plaintiffs cannot be removed at this stage. But the administration can continue restricting new accessions while the litigation plays out.

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Hegseth did not treat the ruling as the end of anything. He made clear the administration is taking the fight to the highest court in the country.

The Supreme Court has already shown a willingness to let the administration enforce its military policy while challenges work through the lower courts, and Hegseth is signaling he intends to test that again.

For now the question of who serves under President Trump’s readiness order is headed where Hegseth wants it, and the administration is preparing to make its case before the justices.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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