The U.S. Supreme Court said May 6 the Trump administration may enforce, for now, a ban on transgender troops serving in the military that had been blocked by lower courts.
The brief, unsigned ruling did not explain the high court’s rationale, which is typical when it responds to emergency applications, as the Trump administration had filed in the case. However, the three justices from the court’s perceived liberal wing — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — noted that they dissented, but also did not provide their reasoning.
At the start of his second term in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to combat what he called “radical gender ideology” in the U.S. military.
The Pentagon subsequently indicated it would form a procedure to identify transgender troops and discharge them, such as those who have received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or other surgical or hormonal treatments, unless they were given an exception.
A similar ban on individuals who identify as transgender from serving in the U.S. military was implemented during the first Trump administration, which the Supreme Court allowed to stand in 2019. That policy was later reversed by the Biden administration.
However, in its second attempt at implementing the policy, the Trump administration expanded the policy to include discharging active duty members experiencing gender dysphoria, rather than only seeking to prevent their enlistment, which may alter the high court’s rationale on such a ban.
In guidance on health care policy and practices released in March 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine outlined the church’s opposition to interventions that “involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof.”
“Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person,” the document said.
According to data from the Pentagon, only a small percentage — 0.2% — of U.S. military members experience gender dysphoria, lower than some estimates predicted.
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington.
