US court rejects Trump’s request to stop military from accepting transgender troops
The ban on trans troops was previously halted by a federal court in November
A federal appeals court has upheld the reversal of President Trump’s transgender military ban.
The court will not allow Trump’s administration to prevent the military from accepting transgender troops from March 2018.
The administration asked a three-judge panel on Thursday (December 21) to suspend an order from a judge in Baltimore which will force the government to accept transgender troops.
Trump’s administration claimed it needed more time to revise their policies to avoid the risk of harming “military readiness”, Daily Caller reports.
However in a brief-two paragraph order, the three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia said it denied the administration’s request as the appeal proceeds.
The court’s action could prompt the administration to ask the US Supreme Court to intervene.
The ban on trans troops was previously halted by a federal court in November when a judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop it from going into effect.
In legal papers, the administration claimed earlier this year that the armed forces aren’t prepared to train thousands of personnel on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants.
President Trump has been attempting to reinstate a longstanding policy overturned by Barack Obama last year that barred transgender individuals from joining the military, and making standing service personnel subject to discharge if they were revealed to be transgender.