‘The far-Left was so busy cheerleading Barack Obama’s wave of social experimentation that they never stopped to ask how those policies were received by the people they affected most…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A protracted legal battle over transgenders in the military took another step toward an inevitable Supreme Court showdown as a D.C. appeals court sided with Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump over the military assessments of activist liberal benches.
Although the appellate court overturned one lower court ruling, several other federal judges have also issued injunctions blocking Trump’s ban on transgender soldiers from taking effect.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco filed a request in November asking the Supreme Court to bypass the normal process in order to fast-track a decision on the four separate injunctions.
“The decisions imposing those injunctions are wrong, and they warrant this Court’s immediate review,” Francisco wrote.
Trump first put forward the idea after consulting with generals and military experts in July 2017, announcing it in a pair of tweets:
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
A month later, he issued a formal directive to the Pentagon. However, he quickly met with resistance from transgender activists and even opponents in his own party. Late Sen. John McCain came out against the ban, as did former Defense Sec. James Mattis.
Although a financial analysis determined that the Trump policy would save $8.4 million annually by breaking from the Obama-era approach of paying for service-people to have gender-reassignment operations, the judges said reversing the Obama protocol—which was first implemented in 2016—would be far too disruptive.
“There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all,” District Judge Colleen Kollar–Kotelly ruled. “In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects.”
The service members “are already suffering harmful consequences such as the cancellation and postponements of surgeries, the stigma of being set apart as inherently unfit, facing the prospect of discharge and inability to commission as an officer, the inability to move forward with long-term medical plans, and the threat to their prospects of obtaining long-term assignments.”
The judges not only thwarted the outright ban, but even fought against other changes in policy, such as halting the recruitment of transgendered troops or ending the government funding of their sex-change surgeries.
The troops “are already suffering harmful consequences such as the cancellation and postponements of surgeries, the stigma of being set apart as inherently unfit, facing the prospect of discharge and inability to commission as an officer, the inability to move forward with long-term medical plans, and the threat to their prospects of obtaining long-term assignments,” said District Judge Marvin Garbis.
According to recent surveys, including one by Military Times, service members overwhelmingly support Trump, with his approval rating among active-duty troops triple that of Obama.
A poll by Smithsonian magazine of 1,031 service members said 61 percent of troops supported the transgender ban.
“The far-Left was so busy cheerleading Barack Obama’s wave of social experimentation that they never stopped to ask how those policies were received by the people they affected most,” wrote Tony Perkins for the religious values think-tank Family Research Council. “Now, two years into the Trump era of putting war-fighting first, new polls are showing just how relieved the rank and file are.”