Transgender people can enlist in the military starting Jan. 1, The Associated Press reports, citing the Pentagon.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request to issue a stay on an October ruling that had blocked President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people in the military while the legal challenge made its way through the courts.
The Pentagon has to honor the court order but also may continue to seek a stay, according to Joshua Block, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
The stay that the administration sought in the case of Doe v. Trump would have allowed the military to delay accepting transgender enlistees, according to a release from LGBTQ rights group GLAAD.
“Today’s legal victory is the latest step towards preventing Trump’s bigoted trans military ban from ever going into full effect,” GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said Monday in a statement. “The Trump administration is struggling to provide any evidence that open trans enlistment be must be delayed because none exists beyond their own hate-fueled anti-LGBTQ agenda.”
Two prominent LGBTQ advocacy organizations, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, filed Doe v. Trump in August on behalf of five transgender service members.
The suit came in response to the president announcing in July that transgender people would no longer be allowed to serve in the military. Trump signed a memo in August banning any new transgender people from enlisting ― a move that provoked widespread backlash.
