The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to stay a lower court’s nationwide injunction blocking enforcement of its policy disqualifying trans-identifying troops from serving in the military.
In the application filed by the Justice Department, U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer requested that the high court stay a universal injunction by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Issued by a Bush-appointed judge, the injunction is one of several orders put forward by lower court judges attempting to prevent the administration’s policy — which largely disqualifies individuals with gender dysphoria from military service — from going into effect.
As noted in the application, the first Trump administration’s military “trans” policy, which was adopted in 2018 under then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, “generally disqualified individuals with gender dysphoria from military service.” While “district courts enjoined the policy on a universal basis” following challenges from various plaintiffs, the Supreme Court “stayed those injunctions,” thus allowing it to take effect.
Military specialists have long highlighted how authorizing Americans who identify as “transgender” to serve negatively affects military readiness.
The Trump administration had previously filed an emergency request to stay the injunction with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel on the court declined to lift the injunction last week, claiming in a one-page order that the administration did “not demonstrate[] that they will suffer irreparable harm absent a stay.”
In its application to SCOTUS, the DOJ argued that the district court’s issuance of a nationwide injunction “usurp[ed] the Executive Branch’s authority to determine who may serve in the Nation’s armed forces.” It also noted that the lower court did this despite the Supreme Court “previously staying injunctions against” the first Trump administration’s military “trans” policy, which the agency contended is “materially indistinguishable” from the one adopted by the Pentagon earlier this year.
“The district court’s injunction cannot be squared with the substantial deference that the Department’s professional military judgments are owed. Nor can the court’s injunction be squared with this Court’s decisions to stay the injunctions against the [2018] Mattis policy,” the application reads. “In staying those injunctions, this Court necessarily determined that the government was likely to succeed in defending the Mattis policy on the merits. Yet the district court failed to identify any relevant difference in the 2025 policy that would justify a different conclusion here.”
Should the Supreme Court fail to grant the administration’s request for stay, the DOJ argued that “the district court’s universal injunction will remain in place for the duration of further review in the Ninth Circuit and in this Court—a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the Nation’s interests.”
If the high court declines to stay the injunction “in its entirety,” the administration requested, “[a]t minimum,” for the justices to “stay the injunction’s universal scope, so that the injunction blocks the implementation of the 2025 policy only as to the eight individual respondents in this case.”
Plaintiffs have until May 1 to file a response to the Trump DOJ’s request, according to CBS News.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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