Prior to his resignation, Defense Secretary James Mattis said he is “prepared to defend” the ban, concluding that troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria carry “impacts of healthcare costs, readiness, and unit cohesion,” and as such present “considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”
(Paul Bois – Daily Wire) The Trump administration’s ban on transgenders serving in the U.S. military got a major boost on Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that the ban should not have been blocked by a lower court.
According to USA Today, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit “ruled that the partial ban announced by the Pentagon, but never implemented, should not have been blocked by a district court while it was being challenged.”
The three-judge panel argued that considerable deference is owed to the executive branch on military policy, noting that the ban on transgenders was not a “blanket ban” and that it had been fine-tuned by Pentagon officials.
“The government took substantial steps to cure the procedural deficiencies the court identified in the enjoined 2017 presidential memorandum,” the panel said, adding that the partial ban “plausibly relies upon the ‘considered professional judgment’ of ‘appropriate military officials,’ and appears to permit some transgender individuals to serve in the military.”
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