The Trump administration on Friday
asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up three out of four cases
challenging President Donald Trump's plan to bar transgender
individuals from serving in the military.
U.S. Solicitor General Neil Francisco
asked the high court to review the cases and reverse preliminary
injunctions blocking the administration from implementing Trump's
ban.
“In arriving at that new policy,
Secretary [James] Mattis and a panel of senior military leaders and
other experts determined that the prior policy, adopted by Secretary
[Ash] Carter, posed too great a risk to military effectiveness and
lethality,” Francisco wrote. “As a result of nationwide
preliminary injunctions issued by various district courts, however,
the military has been forced to maintain that prior policy for nearly
a year. And absent this court’s prompt intervention, it is unlikely
that the military will be able to implement its new policy any time
soon.”
Francisco asked the high court to
consolidate the cases – Karnoski v. Trump, Stockman v. Trump
and Doe v. Trump – and take them up this term, expressing a
sense of urgency in resolving the issue.
“Even if the government were
immediately to seek certiorari from an adverse decision of the court
of appeals, this court would not be able to review that decision in
the ordinary course until next term at the earliest,” Francisco
wrote. “In the interim, the military would be forced nationwide to
maintain the Carter policy – a policy that the military has
concluded poses a threat to ‘readiness, good order and discipline,
sound leadership, and unit cohesion,’ which ‘are essential to
military effectiveness and lethality.'”
Jennifer Levi, lead attorney in the
Stockman and Doe cases, disagreed, saying that the
injunctions simply preserve the status quo.
“There is no urgency here and no
reason for the court to weigh in at this juncture,” Levi
said. “The injunctions preserve the status quo of the open
service policy that was thoroughly vetted by the military itself and
has been in place now for more than two years. This is simply one
more attempt by a reckless Trump administration to push through a
discriminatory policy. The policy flies in the face of military
research and dozens of top military experts.”
Peter Renn of Lambda Legal called the
request “wildly premature and inappropriate.”
“It seems the Trump administration
can't wait to discriminate. Yet again, the Trump administration
flouts established norms and procedures. There is no valid reason to
jump the line now and seek U.S. Supreme court review before the
appellate courts have even ruled on the preliminary issues before
them,” Renn said in a statement.