John Jefferson
At a fiery District Court hearing in Washington, D.C., Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden-appointed federal judge, chastised Department of Justice lawyer Jason Lynch tasked with representing the Defense Department in a federal lawsuit challenging President Trump’s executive order barring transgender individuals from serving in the military.
“An order signed by the President of the United States calls an entire category of people, dishonest, immodest, people who have received medals for taking fire for this country, can you tell me whether that language expresses animus,” Judge Reyes asked Lynch.
“Yes, no, or I don’t know?” Reyes asked, to which Lynch answered: “I don’t know.”
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Judge Reyes exploded, “We are dealing with unadulterated animus, an entire group of people who have served this country, calling them liars!” This is a policy of the President of the United States affecting thousands of people, she said. “To call an entire group of people liars who have no integrity, how is that anything other than showing animus,” Judge Reyes asked.
Lynch argued this is not a transgender ban, it is a pause while the Defense Secretary determines how to align policy to the President’s Executive Order.
“If we had President Trump here and we asked him if this was a transgender ban what do you think he would say,” Judge Reyes asked Lynch.
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Lynch answered that he didn’t know. Judge Reyes went on, “He would say of course it is because he calls it a transgender ban.”
On January 27 President Trump signed an Executive Order “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” which stated that “the Armed Forces have been afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service … and unit cohesion.” The order also stated, “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
Judge Reyes pushed back on that definition asking: “Does the government believe that being trans is an ideology, yes or no.” When the state’s attorney could not answer, she pressed further: “Transgender people just have an ideology, not an immutable characteristic…just thinking something in my head?”
Reyes went on to tell the DOJ lawyer Jason Lynch that the premise of the Executive Order is based on an “incorrect biological assessment” because, she said, there are more than two genders. Judge Reyes then listed 30 different intersex examples: including people who have three X Chromosomes, and some who have XY but have female genitalia.
A tweet last Friday from the US Army barred transgender people from joining the military and halted surgeries for transgender service members. It followed an interview that Defense Secretary Hegseth gave to Breitbart in which he issued a not-so-veiled warning to senior military officers who refuse to “execute culture change.”
“I am not here to declare anybody woke and they’re out,” Hegseth told Breitbart. “I’m paying very close attention. There’s plenty of three- and four-star generals up for promotion or up for new positions, and there will already be a few folks that we’ve identified who will have different jobs in due time….here are the executive orders. Here are the directives on woke, on DEI, on CRT, on genderism, on trans service members, on COVID.”
“The #USArmy will no longer allow transgender individuals to join the military and will stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members. Stay tuned for more details,” the Army posted on X.
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Two LGBTQ legal organizations, GLAD and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, are representing 6 transgender plaintiffs who currently serve in the military and 2 who were in the process of enlisting.
The suit affects an estimated 9,000 to 14,000 transgender service members. The military does not categorize or keep records of those who are transgender, so exact numbers are difficult to assess.
One of the leading plaintiffs is Army Reserve 2nd Lt. Nicolas Talbott, a 31-year-old transgender man who grew up in Lisbon, Ohio, on his grandparents’ farm before enlisting last March. He transitioned from female to male in 2012.
“I was an O-9 Sierra. I went straight from basic training to officer candidate school where I commissioned as a second lieutenant. And since I’m in the reserve, I knew going into the Army that I was going to be a military police officer. So my MOS now is a 91 Alpha military police lieutenant,” Talbott told Fox News. “I was able to keep up with some of the young kids. But for the most part, I outperformed a lot of them. I was very pleasantly surprised with myself in that regard.”
Talbott wanted to join the military after 9/11. He pushed back when asked if the military lowered the standards so he could pass the physical demands of basic training.
“The slogan of officer candidate school is standards. No compromise. And they live by that 100%. There was no compromise for anybody, myself included,” Talbott said. “I was treated the same as everybody else. I showed up just like everyone else. I performed just like everyone else. And there was no disruption whatsoever caused simply by my presence.”
Talbott’s lawyer Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, was in the courtroom today.
“It is so simple. It is so straightforward. We have one legal argument that it violates the equal protection clause to single out a group of people to exclude them from military service based on a characteristic that has absolutely nothing to do with their fitness or ability to do the job,” Minter told Fox. “These trans service members have to meet exactly the same standards as others in terms of medical requirements, fitness to deploy, ability and job performance. There is no special deal for transgender troops. They serve on the exact same terms as everyone else.”
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The President’s Executive Order and subsequent memo from Defense Secretary Hegseth on February 7 described the decision as a readiness issue. “The Department must ensure it is building ‘One Force’ without subgroups defined by anything other than ability and mission adherence. Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our Force and make us vulnerable,” Hegseth wrote. “Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused.”
Judge Reyes cited a recent case in which a transgender service member was “on the operating table about to get anesthesia” and someone stopped the surgery to comply with the Defense Secretary’s guidance. She mentioned a second case in which a transgender service member drove all night from a military base to get a medically necessary procedure until the commander called and said “you need to turn around and come back or you will be considered AWOL, absent without leave,” and face punishment.
Some supporters of a transgender military ban have suggested that surgeries and hormone treatments could interfere with deployment cycles.
“Absolutely not,” Minter said, noting that in order for a trans person to join the military, the person must have already transitioned and been stable for at least 18 months prior to enlisting.
“The medical treatments that transgender people undergo have little to no effect whatsoever on deployability. Hormone therapy has no effect at all….Not all transgender people in the military have these surgeries. The ones who do, it is a very short recovery time, far shorter than many other much more common medical conditions that other service members undergo,” such as knee surgeries or appendectomies. “So that is a really a red herring.”
“If this ban goes into place, this will impact me personally by essentially ripping away my dream,” Talbott said. “This is what I have always wanted to be when I grow up, so to speak, is a United States Army officer. And I think that it impacts me in my personal life, you know, not only as an officer in the Army, but as an American citizen. Knowing that we’re going to lose so many thousands of talented people who are making our nation a safer place. That has a profound impact on me just as a United States citizen as well.”
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A recent Gallup poll shows 58% of Americans support transgender individuals in the military, down from 66% in 2021 and 71% in 2019.
Judge Reyes asked DOJ lawyer Jason Lynch at the start of the hearing that if he were under fire in a foxhole with someone who is transgender and has commendations for bravery, “you wouldn’t care about their gender ideology, right?” Lynch answered that he doubted that gender identity would be on his mind in that situation.
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