By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to allow implementation of his order banning transgender people from serving in the military, one of a series of directives by the Republican president to curb transgender rights.
The Justice Department in a filing requested that the court lift Seattle-based U.S. Judge District Benjamin Settle’s nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump’s prohibition on transgender service members while a legal challenge to the policy proceeds. Settle found that Trump’s executive order likely violates the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment right to equal protection under the law.
Trump in January signed an executive order that cast the gender identify of transgender people as a lie and asserted that they are unable to satisfy the standards needed for service in the American armed forces.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” Trump’s order stated.
The directive reversed a policy implemented under Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden to allow transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces.
The Pentagon later issued guidance to implement Trump’s order, disqualifying from military service current troops and applicants with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition steps. The guidance allowed people to be considered for a waiver on a case-by-case basis if their service would directly support “warfighting capabilities.”
Gender dysphoria is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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