A federal judge on Tuesday signaled she would side with a group of transgender soldiers who sued to block President Trump’s executive order on transgender troops.
Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, grilled DOJ lawyers on Tuesday and said that Trump’s executive order asserting there are only two genders is “not biologically correct.”
“With the DOD policy expected to be finalized over the coming week, Reyes said she would hold off on issuing an order but had largely made up her mind about the legality of the order, at one point remarking that “smarter people on the D.C. Circuit would have to tell me I’m wrong” about the policy. She added that the central premise of the executive order — that only two genders exist — is “not biologically correct.”” – ABC News reported.
Last month President Trump signed the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” executive orders, which direct every element of the U.S. military to “operate free from any preference based on race or sex” and root out gender insanity and made up pronoun usage, respectively.
This order directs the Secretary of Defense to ensure that military service is “reserved for those mentally and physically fit for duty” and “promptly issue directives for DoD to end invented and identification-based pronoun usage.” The standards for our military troops are deemed “inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”
“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”
Judge Reyes also grilled lawyers on the use of pronouns and gender ideology.
“If you were in a foxhole, you wouldn’t care about these individuals’ gender ideology, right?” the judge asked DOJ lawyers.
The judge did not issue a ruling on Tuesday.
ABC News reported:
A federal judge appears poised to block the Trump administration if the Department of Defense attempts to place limitations on or ban transgender service members.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes is still hearing arguments Tuesday in the case but signaled deep skepticism with the claim that transgender service members lessen the military’s lethality or readiness.
“You and I both agree that the greatest fighting force that world history has ever seen is not going to be impacted in any way by less than 1% of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them. Would you agree with that?” Judge Reyes asked during a hearing this morning.
“No, Your Honor, I’m not. I can’t agree with that,” a lawyer for the Department of Justice responded.
At issue is Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order that directed the DOD to update its guidance “regarding trans-identifying medical standards for military service and to rescind guidance inconsistent with military readiness.” While the Department of Defense has not issued final guidance on transgender service members, the order led to a pause in gender affirming care for service members and is expected to lead to a significant curtailment of transgender service members based on “readiness and lethality.”
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