The Supreme Court has, once again, dealt a blow to transgender people serving in the United States armed forces, allowing President Trump's executive-order ban to stand while its constitutionality is being broadly questioned by lower courts.

The Supreme Court's six-member conservative majority has issued an unsigned, unexplained ruling today, granting the Trump administration's request for an emergency stay of a lower court's preliminary injunction stopping the ban on trans people in the military. The stay was requested after a judge in the Western District of Washington, Judge Benjamin H. Settle, issued a nationwide injunction in late March in a case brought by seven active service members and one who wishes to enlist.

The brief ruling explains that the injunction shall be "stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought. Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court."

The ruling notes that the three liberals on the court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented and would have allowed the injunction to remain in place.

The Ninth Circuit had previously declined to block Judge Settle's ruling pending its decision in an appeal of the case.

Judge Settle wrote, regarding one of the plaintiffs, Commander Emily Shilling, who has been a naval aviator for 19 years, "There is no claim and no evidence that she is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service."

The judge, who was a George W. Bush appointee, added, "There is no claim and no evidence that Shilling herself is dishonest or selfish, or that she lacks humility or integrity. Yet absent an injunction, she will be promptly discharged solely because she is transgender."

The plaintiffs challenging the ban, both in this case and in another brought in Washington DC, have called out the "animus-laden language" that was used in Trump's executive order, which was issued on Day One of his new presidency — as promised in the Project 2025 document. As the New York Times notes, a Biden-appointed judge hearing the DC case, Judge Ana C. Reyes, argued from the bench with Trump DOJ attorneys about the biological reality that humans with varying chromosomal differences exist in nature, and that it is categorically false to say that there are only two genders, male and female.

"I mean, it's actually kind of a really important point because this executive order is premised on an assertion that's not biologically correct," Reyes said, per This American Life. "There are anywhere near about 30 different intersex examples. So someone who does not have just an XX or XY chromosome is not just male or female, they're intersex."

Reyes issued a similar injunction against the ban, and her injunction was blocked by an administrative stay issued by the DC Circuit court, which is still expected to rule on the merits of the case.

It seems clear that John Roberts and perhaps other members of the court would prefer not to take on the hot-button culture-war issue of trans rights, especially in a time when Democrats, Independents and Republicans across the country decried the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the Trump administration seems hellbent on de-legitimizing the power of the courts, full stop.

Any definitive ruling by the high court stands the chance of further disgracing it in the minds of liberals, or, contrarily, creating another constitutional crisis if Trump refuses to obey its order and plows ahead as he pleases.

As the Times notes, the Supreme Court, when it had a 5-4 conservative majority back in 2019, previously allowed a similar trans-people-in-the-military executive-order ban by the first Trump administration to stand while the issue was battled out in the lower courts. They got off the hook from having to rule on the issue when Biden took office, rescinded the Trump ban, and the cases were dropped.

LGBTQ rights groups Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation issued a statement Tuesday in response to the court's ruling, saying, "By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice. Transgender individuals meet the same standards and demonstrate the same values as all who serve. We remain steadfast in our belief that this ban violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and will ultimately be struck down."

Photo by Ian Hutchinson