A divided federal appeals court on Monday, June 1, 2026, concluded the Trump administration’s policy banning transgender individuals from serving in the military is likely unconstitutional. (Joshua Magbanua/U.S. Air Force)
WASHINGTON — A divided federal appeals court on Monday concluded the Trump administration’s policy banning transgender individuals from serving in the military is likely unconstitutional.
The majority opinion by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a March 2025 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington. Reyes concluded that President Donald Trump’s executive order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights.
Judges Judith Rogers and Robert Wilkins agreed that the Trump administration’s policy targeting transgender service members likely violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.
The two judges agreed to leave in place a preliminary injunction that prevented the Defense Department from removing transgender troops from service. That order is narrow, covering only the active-duty plaintiffs in the case.
“The government’s stated reason for issuing the Hegseth Policy as based solely upon gender dysphoria was pretextual, and that instead, the Hegseth Policy was premised, at least in part, on a non-legitimate state interest to harm the politically unpopular group of transgender persons,” Wilkins wrote in an opinion, adding that Trump “declared transgender people as categorically unfit for military service explicitly because of their gender identity.”
Meanwhile, Wilkins and Judge Justin Walker allowed the administration to enforce restrictions on transgender plaintiffs seeking to join the military but were prevented under the new policy from doing so.
The administration appealed after Reyes issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys for six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military. The appeals court’s majority decided that the injunction should be narrowed to the plaintiffs currently serving in the military but not those seeking to join.
In January 2025, Trump signed an executive order that claimed the gender identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.
“We will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It’s going to be gone,” Trump said at the time during a retreat of House Republicans at his Doral golf resort in Miami.
In response to the order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies people with gender dysphoria from military service unless they obtained a waiver. Gender dysphoria is the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.
There are approximately 4,200 transgender service members in the U.S. military, according to figures released by the Defense Department in February 2025.
The current ruling is not a final decision. Instead, it determines what parts of the policy can remain in effect while the lawsuit continues in the lower court.
