Supreme Court Grants President Trump a Victory on Military Transgender Ban

The Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration on Tuesday, allowing a ban on transgender military members to take effect while a legal challenge goes forward.

The ban flows from an executive order stating that the sexual identity of trans service members conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle and is harmful to military readiness.

“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 president’s directive stated.

The high court’s ruling lifted a lower court order that paused the Pentagon’s transgender military ban from taking effect.

The court’s liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, publicly dissented from the decision and said they would have denied the administration’s appeal.

The Trump administration argued that stalling the policy could pose a further threat to the country’s military readiness.

“Absent a stay, 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,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court. 

The executive order was immediately challenged by seven transgender military members in a Seattle-based federal court who argued that the ban denied them the constitutional right to equal protection under the law.

The plaintiffs in Shilling v. United States argued the order “turns away” transgender military members “and kicks them out – for no legitimate reason,” Fox News reported. 

“It baselessly declares all transgender people unfit to serve, insults and demeans them, and cruelly describes every one of them as incapable of ‘an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,’ based solely because they are transgender,” the lawsuit said.

U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle issued a preliminary injunction in March, writing that his order was to “maintain the status quo of military policy regarding both active-duty and prospective transgender service.”

Later in the month, a three-judge panel denied the administration’s request for a stay, which the Supreme Court overturned. 

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the high court’s decision a massive victory for Trump on X.

Another MASSIVE victory in the Supreme Court!

President Trump and Secretary @PeteHegseth are restoring a military that is focused on readiness and lethality – not DEI or woke gender ideology. pic.twitter.com/gyquQc3z0c

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) May 6, 2025

She wrote, “President Trump and Secretary @PeteHegseth are restoring a military that is focused on readiness and lethality – not DEI or woke gender ideology.”

***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***