meanwhile

[sidleypkhermit]

In amidst everything else that's been going on, don't miss the occasional good news — like the administration being rebuked by the courts again in their ongoing attempt to discriminate against trans people in the military.

The Ninth Circuit ruling holds that the stay requested by the government “would upend, rather than preserve, the status quo,” which currently allows transgender people to serve in the military.

The Trump administration had sought a stay from the Ninth Circuit while it appealed the April 13 ruling of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington affirming an earlier preliminary injunction and barring implementation of the transgender military ban.

The April 13 ruling rejected the Trump administration’s claim that its “new” plan to ban transgender people from serving openly in the U.S. Armed Services, released March 23, passed muster. Instead, the court found that plan to be a retread of the original ban, not a new policy, threatening the very same constitutional violations.

Furthermore, the court also found that the effort to ban transgender people from military service must meet the most demanding level of scrutiny because it so clearly targets transgender people.

The case is on track to go to trial in April 2019.

Comments

[impala-chick.livejournal.com]

We talked a little bit about this case at work today. Seems like a good sign.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

They just keep getting completely spanked in the courts. The trans ban really shows who they are so much, because it's *so* unpopular with, like, everyone, the general public hates it, the military doesn't want it, even the right-wing creepos who were trying to lobby him about trans military service weren't asking for a policy this extreme. It's prima facie discriminatory and it was created by a spur-of-the-moment tweet. They could just... stop trying to do this! But discrimination is like their whole raison d'etre, they can't relent on their discriminatory positions or they have nothing.

[impala-chick.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm still shocked they haven't backed down even a bit on this. Even the Coast Guard commandant has said the CG would basically not comply with a ban anyway. This administration is trying to impale itself. If nothing else, maybe the case law from these decisions will be useful in the future.

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

That's true, they're kind of doing a great job of establishing case law that shows it's illegal to do what they're trying to do to trans people. God, what a bunch of morons.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_profiterole_/]

That's good to hear. :-)

[sidleypkhermit.livejournal.com]

It is. It's hard to remember sometimes because of all the chaos, but this administration has been very unsuccessful in their policy priorities at home, because we don't have a very strong federal government structurally and most of their goals are 1) unpopular and 2) uh, illegal.