Court Rules on Trump’s Transgender Policy Change in Military

A United States federal court in Washington has barred President Trump from reversing the policy on military service by transgender people.

According to the Associated Press, the court announced Monday that it will not allow Trump to refuse the service of transgender people or allow them to be discharged for being transgender.

The judge said that the president’s directives are “not genuinely based on legitimate concerns regarding military effectiveness or budget constraints, but are instead driven by a desire to express disapproval of transgender people generally,” ABC’s WCVB reports.

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In August, Trump formally ordered the Department of Defense to reverse a 2016 order allowing transgender individuals to serve openly in the military.

His call for a policy change came shortly after he surprised government officials by tweeting a series of messages that he would reverse the policy Obama had put in place.

“The United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump tweeted on July 26.

Before the Aug. 25 presidential memorandum to reverse the policy, the Department of Defense had announced that openly transgender individuals would be allowed to serve in the military, effective January 1, 2018, and would prohibit the discharge of members based on a person’s gender identity.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote Monday that transgender members of the military who had sued over the President’s change were likely to win their lawsuits, and she barred the Trump administration from reversing Obama’s policy.