Free Republic

A San Francisco-based federal appeals court ordered a judge Friday to reconsider her ruling against President Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from the military. In a unanimous, unsigned order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals told a federal district judge in the state of Washington to take into account executive privileges in reweighing her decision. The U.S. Supreme Court put a hold on the judge’s nationwide injunction in January, allowing the ban to take effect while the government appealed to the 9th Circuit. Friday’s decision continued that hold. Gay rights lawyers who brought the...

When former President Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress repealed the 1990’s Clinton-era “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, enabling gays and lesbians to serve in the U.S. military by forbidding recruiters from inquiring about sexual orientation, the commanders of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard carried out the policy, no questions asked. Then, during the final year of his presidency — when he wasn’t overseeing the “Spygate” operation — Obama signed an executive order lifting a military ban on transgender troops, the service branch commanders did the same thing: They received their orders from the commander-in-chief and...

Nicholas Bade showed up at an Air Force recruiting office on an icy morning in January, determined to be one of the first transgender recruits to enlist in the military. He was in top shape, and had earned two martial arts black belts. He had already aced the military aptitude test, and organized the stack of medical records required to show he was stable and healthy enough to serve. So he expected to be called for basic training in a month, maybe two at the most. Six months later, he’s still waiting. And so are nearly all other transgender recruits...

The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to delay a requirement to begin accepting transgender recruits to the military on Jan. 1. “Specifically, Defendants request that the Court stay the portion of its preliminary injunction requiring Defendants to begin accessing transgender individuals into the military on January 1, 2018, pending a decision by the D.C. Circuit on Defendants’ appeal,” the government wrote in a motion filed late Wednesday. The administration and the plaintiffs have asked for a decision by noon Monday. In October, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked President Trump’s...

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is leading a group of 15 Democratic attorneys general in opposing President Donald Trump’s administration’s plan to bar transgender individuals from openly serving in the military. The group filed a brief Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia arguing that banning transgender individuals from the military is unconstitutional and against the interest of national defense and that it harms the transgender community. “Our military should be open to every brave American who volunteers to serve,” Healey said. In the brief, the attorneys general argue that “nothing about being transgender inhibits a person’s...

President Donald Trump’s decision on Wednesday morning to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military “in any capacity” has the potential to save taxpayers up to $8.4 million dollars per year, according to a RAND study. […] This decision comes two weeks after the House of Representatives failed to pass the Hartzler Amendment, which would have prohibited the Pentagon from using taxpayer funds to pay for sex reassignment surgeries. 23 Republicans joined 190 Democrats to vote down Rep. Vicky Hartzler’s (R-Mo.) amendment. The RAND Corporation, a public policy research organization, conducted a study last year to “assess the implications...