A second federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked President Trump’s ban on transgender troops.
In January President Trump signed the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” executive orders, which direct every element of the U.S. military to “operate free from any preference based on race or sex” and root out gender insanity and made up pronoun usage, respectively.
US District Judge Benjamin Hale Settle in Washington State, issued a nationwide preliminary injunction on Thursday evening.
Judge Settle, a George W. Bush appointee, said the Trump DOJ’s arguments have not been persuasive.
The Hill reported:
A federal judge in Washington state on Thursday blocked enforcement of President Trump’s order to bar transgender troops from serving openly in the military, the second judge to halt the policy from taking effect nationwide.
In a 65-page ruling, Judge Benjamin Hale Settle of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington said the Trump administration had offered no evidence to support removing transgender service members, who served without issue under the Biden administration, from the military.
“The government’s arguments are not persuasive, and it is not an especially close question on this record,” Settle, an appointee of former President George W. Bush and a retired captain in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, wrote in his decision. “The government’s unrelenting reliance on deference to military judgment is unjustified in the absence of any evidence supporting ‘the military’s’ new judgment reflected in the Military Ban—in its equally considered and unquestionable judgment, that very same military had only the week before permitted active-duty plaintiffs (and some thousands of others) to serve openly.”
Trump’s DOJ filed an appeal on Friday.
BREAKING: Trump Administration files appeal from lower court decision that enter an injunction prohibiting military from excluding those with gender dysphoria. https://t.co/ixGvRgLuC9 pic.twitter.com/y1RJ4Z8L6O
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) March 28, 2025
Last week, Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee from Uruguay, issued a temporary nationwide injunction blocking Trump’s transgender military ban.
