In the legal dispute over the discharge of transgender people from the U.S. military, President Donald Trump’s administration has taken the case to the Supreme Court. A corresponding petition (PDF) was filed with the court, a spokesperson for the German press agency confirmed. Whether the Supreme Court will accept the case, however, remains unclear.
The Department of Defense, acting on Trump’s orders in 2025, directed that transgender people be largely barred from military service (TheColu.mn reported). Lower courts had blocked this for now, but a final ruling has not yet been issued (TheColu.mn reported). Trump’s petition to the Supreme Court in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., aims to remove these service members from duty even before a ruling.
The district court of first instance was convinced that the exclusion of transgender people violated the constitutional guarantee that all people must be treated equally under the law. The policy, named after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, rested “at least partly on an impermissible government interest in harming the politically unpopular group of transgender people,” the court said in its reasoning.
The U.S. government described this in its petition to the Supreme Court as a “grave misjudgment.” The capability of the armed forces to decide for themselves who may serve in the military is a matter of extraordinary importance.
