President Trump's ban on transgender servicemembers in the military was ruled likely to be unconstitutional and blocked in the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia on Monday, October 30.
According to Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the policy proposal to shun transgender members based on costs the administration says such individuals would have on the military budget appears to violate the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause. In Kollar-Kotelly's ruling she notes that her dismissal of the government's Fifth Amendment claim has to do with: “a number of factors — including the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered by the directives, the unusual circumstances surrounding the President’s announcement of them, the fact that the reasons given for them do not appear to be supported by any facts, and the recent rejection of those reasons by the military itself."
Her mention of the "unusual circumstances surrounding the President's announcement" of the ban is a reference to the series of July tweets that Trump was later discovered to have unleashed without consulting military brass. Numerous fact checks concerning the impact transgender soldiers would have on the budget followed suit to reveal that they'd be responsible for an increase of between 0.04 and 0.13 percent in healthcare costs. The federal government is now facing a bevy of lawsuits as a result of the botched proposal.
Thanks to Kollar-Kotelly's ruling, the March 2018 date that had been scheduled for the discharge of all transgender servicemen and women has been called off and re-enlistment for such individuals will resume as early as January.
