In a major win for the Trump administration, a federal appellate court upheld the Pentagon’s prohibition on trans-identifying individuals from serving in the military on Tuesday.
In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals fully paused a March injunction issued by Biden-appointed District Judge Ana Reyes that sought to prevent the aforementioned policy from going into effect. As The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann previously reported, Reyes “identifies as some variety of LGBT, is a longtime Democrat Party donor and, as a lawyer, litigated against the first Trump administration.”
Writing for the majority, Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, noted how War Secretary Pete Hegseth “concluded” that adopting a policy prohibiting gender dysphoric individuals from service “would advance important military interests of combat readiness, unit cohesion, and cost control.” Despite the secretary’s consultation of existing data and “more recent studies” to justify the decision, Katsas wrote, the district court “nonetheless preliminarily enjoined the 2025 policy based on its own contrary assessment of the evidence.”