2nd US judge halts proposed transgender military ban
BALTIMORE — Another federal judge has halted a proposed transgender military ban, expanding on an initial ruling issued last month against the plan by President Donald Trump’s administration.
In a preliminary injunction issued Tuesday in Baltimore, U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis ruled that transgender service members have “demonstrated that they are already suffering harmful consequences” due to the proposed ban including threat of discharge, stigma and the cancellation or delay of surgeries related to their gender transitions. The six plaintiffs in the lawsuit he reviewed have all been receiving hormone therapy.
Trump had announced on Twitter in July that the government would not allow transgender individuals to serve in the military in any capacity. The order was a proposed reinstatement of a longstanding policy that barred transgender people from joining the military and also subjected service members to discharge if they were revealed to be transgender. That policy was changed last year under President Barack Obama.
But in a strongly-worded passage from his 53-page decision, Garbis wrote that the “capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders qualified to understand the ramifications of policy change.”