Federal Court Blocks Discriminatory Transgender Military Ban

LGBTQ EqualityTrans RightsTalbott v. United States

Mar 19

On March 18, 2025, a federal judge issued a nationwide preliminary injunction barring the military from enforcing President Trump’s ban on transgender service members.

In her 79-page opinion in Talbott v. United States, U.S. District Ana C. Reyes held that the plaintiffs — fourteen transgender active-duty service members, one transgender recent enlistee, and five transgender people in the process of enlisting — will likely succeed in proving that the ban is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee. Observing that the active-duty plaintiffs “[t]ogether have provided over 130 years of military service” and have received numerous accolades for that service, Judge Reyes noted “the cruel irony . . . that thousands of transgender service members have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them.”

When President Trump announced the ban in a January 27 executive order, he stated that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,” and “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” Judge Reyes, finding that the military had failed to put forth any evidence substantiating the President’s assertions, concluded that “Plaintiffs’ service records alone are Exhibit A for the proposition that transgender persons can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military readiness.”

The court — further noting that the Pentagon “rushed” its policy implementing the President’s executive order and failed to consider the military’s experience with transgender persons serving openly since 2021 — concluded that the ban “is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext” and that “[i]ts language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.”

The preliminary injunction is set to go into effect on March 21.

Joseph Wardenski of Wardenski P.C. is honored to co-counsel with plaintiffs’ lead attorneys, Jennifer Levi of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law) and Shannon Minter of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, in this important case.