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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth responds to a reporter’s question before the start of a meeting with visiting Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Richard Marles at the Pentagon, Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta).
The federal judge that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused of overstepping her authority has rejected — for a second time — the Pentagon’s demand that she allow the Trump administration’s transgender military ban to move forward.
The case of Talbott v. Trump is the first legal challenge filed against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from military service. LGBTQ+ advocacy groups GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) brought the case on behalf of 32 plaintiffs challenging the legality of the order.
On March 18, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes granted plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, calling the ban “unabashedly demeaning,” and barring its enforcement. After Reyes, a Joe Biden appointee, issued her order, the Trump administration asked that the judge reconsider the ruling under a newly-issued guidance document that it claimed showed that the ruling had been incorrect.
Hegseth responded to Reyes’s ruling by taking to social media platform X and posting, “We are appealing this decision, and we will win.”
The next day, Hegseth posted again about the case, this time putting Reyes’s judicial title in quotes, taking a jab at her pronouns, and sarcastically referring to the judge as “Commander Reyes.”
Since “Judge” Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids…after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare. https://t.co/CNrl252Irs
— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) March 22, 2025
After considering the administration’s renewed motion, Reyes came to the same conclusion Wednesday: the ban is illegally discriminatory and is barred from enforcement. The new Military Department Identification Guidance (MDI), Reyes concluded, actually supports plaintiffs’ position — not Hegseth’s, she said.
“The MDI Guidance is new, but Defendants’ argument is not,” Reyes wrote.
In a brutal 16-page takedown of the Trump administration’s position, the judge summarized — and bluntly rejected — the administration’s failing argument:
The Military Ban regulates a medical condition, they insist, not people. And therein lies the problem. Gender dysphoria is not like other medical conditions, something Defendants well know. It affects only one group of people: all persons with gender dysphoria are transgender and only transgender persons experience gender dysphoria.
Does this mean that all transgender persons have gender dysphoria? No, of course not. But it does mean that when Defendants regulate gender dysphoria, they knowingly and necessarily regulate only transgender persons.
Reyes flatly rejected the notion that the ban is about “a medical condition,” as argued by the Trump administration.
She wrote:
This litigation is not about a medical condition. A medical condition has not given its country decades of military service. Or deployed into combat zones throughout the globe. Or earned countless commendations. People have. A medical condition has not fought terrorism. Or analyzed intelligence. Or commanded platoons. People have. A medical condition has not been accused of lacking warrior ethos. Or been branded dishonorable, dishonest, and undisciplined. Or been threatened with the loss of livelihood. People have. Transgender people.
Next, Reyes brutally dissected Hegseth’s argument in favor of the ban.
“In civilian-speak, DoD plans to (1) assign people — they do not say who, but presumably some type of military gender police — to review medical files for signs of gender dysphoria, and (2) require each of the estimated 1.3 million active-duty service members to attest — at least once a year — whether they exhibit symptoms of gender dysphoria and turn themselves in if they do,” she summarized. “Then DoD will discharge them.”
“Well, let’s Occam’s razor this,” Reyes suggested, referring to the concept that when faced with competing explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is usually the most accurate.
“What is the more straightforward explanation?” Reyes asked. “That the new guidance reveals the Hegseth Policy for what it is: animus directed at transgender persons? Or that experienced military leaders acting in good faith have adjudged that ridding the military of the less than 2,000 persons who might have gender dysphoria requires committing scarce, expensive resources to invading the privacy of the more than 1.3 million active-duty members who certainly do not — year after year?”
“If the MDI Guidance confirms anything, it confirms that the Hegseth Policy is not based on reasoned judgment,” the judge concluded.
Reyes noted that Hegseth’s argument ignores evidence from high-level military officials who testified that in practice, integrating transgender persons into the military improved military readiness and unit cohesion and had no detrimental effects.
Reyes said that intermediate scrutiny applies to the case, as the transgender ban is at its heart a gender-based distinction. However, she said, the government’s argument would fail even under the much less stringent rational basis standard given that there is “considerable doubt” that the policy “is based on anything other than animus.”
As a result of the decision, Reyes’s order blocking the government from enforcing the ban will take effect at 7 p.m. on Friday.
GLAD Law Senior Director of Transgender and Queer Rights Jennifer Levi praised Reyes’s ruling for protecting military families from “a crushing amount of pressure as they navigate a limbo with outcomes that will cause devastating harms to the military careers of these incredible soldiers.
“It is unthinkable that we would treat this way the brave individuals who sacrifice so much for our country,” Levi also said.
Likewise, NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter said in a statement:
This motion was nothing more than a last-ditch tactic to sow confusion and cause delay. There is no way to defend a policy that seeks to recklessly discard thousands of highly trained, skilled, and decorated transgender servicemembers, many of whom have deployed to critical locations across the globe. The government has conceded it has no evidence to support its position and no reason to discharge individuals who are serving capably and honorably.
You can read the full ruling here.
