President Donald Trump’s administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the firing of 29 military service members who are transgender.
The urgent appeal involves the possible removal of active-duty service members who are also reservists, National Guard members, and one individual trying to enlist, ABC News reported Monday.
The move came “before their case challenging the Pentagon ban goes to trial in January,” the outlet said. “Several courts have found that the ban was likely rooted in animus and violates servicemembers’ constitutional rights to due process and equal protection — a conclusion the government strongly disputes.”
The ABC article continued:
While the justices last year gave Trump the green light to move forward broadly with a ban on service members who have a history of gender dysphoria, federal judges in a separate case, U.S. v. Talbott, last June blocked the military from discharging more than two dozen individual plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit challenging the policy.
Solicitor General John Sauer called the ruling allowing those plaintiffs to remain in their positions “gravely erroneous.”
Trump issued an executive order in January 2025 which said that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
“Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. 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,” the order stated.
The Trump administration has faced challenges as it has been working to “restore biological reality” in the federal government.
Leftist transgender ideology has targeted biological women and girls in sports, people who have detransitioned, and also sparked a debate over biological men in women’s restrooms making those spaces unsafe.
In February 2025, Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth paused accessions for transgender recruits and paused medical procedures that affirmed or facilitated a gender transition, according to Breitbart News:
The action follows Trump’s January 27 memo, which emphasized that those serving in the U.S. military must be both “mentally and physically fit for duty.”
“The Armed Forces must adhere to high mental and physical health standards to ensure our military can deploy, fight, and win, including in austere conditions and without the benefit of routine medical treatment or special provisions,” it states, emphasizing that such standards are inconsistent with what it describes as the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.”
Per the ABC article, the 29 plaintiffs in the case will remain in the force and in the enlistment process for the time being.
Read the full article here