A divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled yesterday that the Trump Administration ban on transgender individuals serving in the military likely violated equal protection.
The ruling, while only preliminary (thus holding the plaintiffs were likely to succeed) and while applicable only to the plaintiffs in the case, nevertheless deals a significant blow to the Trump Administration efforts to ban transgender individuals from military service. It also offers a scathing assessment of those efforts, concluding that they were arbitrary and based on sheer animus.
The ruling says that the government can’t base policy, even military policy, on animus alone; instead, the government has to have legitimate reasons.
The case, Talbott v. United States, challenges the Administration’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. That ban arose out of President Trump’s January 27, 2025, Executive Order proclaiming that persons “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.” President Trump, and later Secretary Hegseth, also declared that persons afflicted with gender dysphoria are unfit for military service because, among other things, their character is “inconsistent” with the “high standards . . . [of] honesty, humility, . . . and integrity.” The “Hegseth Policy” deems transgender applicants for military service unqualified; and it mandates that currently serving transgender individuals go through the administrative separation process, a process usually reserved for personnel accused of misconduct. (The Policy specifically disqualifies anyone with a history of gender dysphoria. But its broad language effectively disqualifies any transgender person, whether they have a history of gender dysphoria or not.)
The district court ruled that plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their challenge to the Policy and entered a preliminary injunction halting the Policy’s implementation as to the plaintiffs.
The divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part.
Two judges agreed that the Policy likely violated equal protection. Judges Wilkins and Rogers concluded that the the Policy was based only on animus and therefore failed at any level of review. In short, they said that the Administration failed to provide a legitimate reason for the Policy, and that President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s stated justifications amounted only to “a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” USDA v. Moreno (1973). They said that neither United States v. Skrmetti (2025) (upholding state bans on certain medical treatments for transgender minors) nor Trump v. Hawaii (2018) (upholding President Trump’s first-term travel ban) changed this.
Judge Walker, in dissent, argued that the court should give greater deference to the Administration’s military judgment. “We have neither the expertise nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks. The Constitution assigns that authority to Congress and the Commander in Chief.”
Ultimately, the court only affirmed the district court injunction as to those plaintiffs already in the military, and not to the plaintiffs who are seeking accession into the military.
Constitution360 
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