U.S. court blocks Pentagon from removing transgender troops, for now

Subscribed with another email? Logout and Login with that one. Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Science For All The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers THEdge At the cutting edge of education and careers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there Gender Agenda Stories from beyond the binary. The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. The ban on military service is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to eradicate the recognition and accommodation of transgender people throughout American life. File | Photo Credit: AP A U.S. appeals court on Monday (June 1, 2026) said U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration could, for now, bar transgender people from enlisting in the military, but blocked the expulsion of current service members while a lawsuit plays out. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a 2-1 ruling, said the 2025 policy was unlawfully motivated “by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” But the Pentagon has broad powers to set enlistment standards, the court said, and can continue to ban transgender people from newly entering the military pending the outcome of a lawsuit by transgender current and would-be service members. “It appears to us to be a much greater hardship to end a military career than to delay the start of one,” wrote Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama. Circuit Judge Justin Walker, a Mr. Trump appointee, in a dissenting opinion, said courts “have neither the expertise nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks.” Jennifer Levi of LGBTQ rights group GLAD Law, who represents the plaintiffs, applauded the decision. “This decisive ruling confirms that the Trump Administration has no legitimate basis to discharge transgender service members who have met every demanding standard and proven, time and again, their fitness and dedication to serve,” Ms. Levi said in a statement. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth indicated that the government would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. “See you at SCOTUS,” Mr. Hegseth wrote on X in response to a Fox News reporter’s post about the decision. The ruling partially upholds a 2025 decision by a Washington, D.C.-based federal judge who had blocked the entire policy from being implemented pending further litigation. The judge said the policy amounted to sex discrimination and likely violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Mr. Trump, in a January 2025 executive order, said that adopting a transgender identity “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Hegseth implemented Trump’s order soon after, prompting legal challenges. The ban on military service is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to eradicate the recognition and accommodation of transgender people throughout American life. Federal agencies have dropped lawsuits filed on behalf of transgender workers, ended settlements that benefited transgender students and launched investigations into hospitals and doctors for providing gender-affirming treatment to minors. The military has about 1.3 million active-duty personnel, according to Department of Defense data. While transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, officials say the number is in the low thousands. The U.S. Supreme Court in May 2025 allowed the policy to be implemented, lifting a judge’s ruling in a separate case out of the state of Washington that had temporarily blocked the ban. But the Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning and may have been ruling on a technicality rather than the merits of the case, Wilkins wrote for the D.C. Circuit on Monday. Copyright© 2026, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. Terms & conditions | Institutional Subscriber Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

U.S. court blocks Pentagon from removing transgender troops, for now

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U.S. court blocks Pentagon from removing transgender troops, for now

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