Appeals Court Sides With Hegseth On ‘Trans’ Military Ban, Scolds Biden Judge

A federal appeals court delivered a significant victory Tuesday for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration, reinstating the Pentagon’s policy barring transgender-identifying individuals from serving in the U.S. military. In doing so, the panel also issued a sharp rebuke to the Biden-appointed judge who tried to block the policy.

In a 2–1 ruling, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals faulted U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes for substituting her own ideological preferences ahead of the Pentagon’s professional judgment.

“In our view, the court afforded insufficient deference to the Secretary’s considered judgment. Accordingly, we stay the preliminary injunction pending the government’s appeal,” the panel wrote.

Judge Gregory G. Katsas — appointed by President Donald Trump — authored the majority opinion, joined by Judge Neomi Jehangir Rao, also a Trump appointee. Katsas emphasized that military standards exist to ensure a fighting force capable of winning wars, not advancing political fashion.

“The United States military enforces strict medical standards to ensure that only physically and mentally fit individuals join its ranks. For decades, these requirements barred service by individuals with gender dysphoria, a medical condition associated with clinically significant distress,” Katsas wrote.

He continued, “The 2025 policy generally bars individuals with gender dysphoria from serving in the Armed Forces. The Secretary of Defense concluded that this policy would advance important military interests of combat readiness, unit cohesion, and cost control. In doing so, he consulted materials compiled to assess the 2016 and 2018 policy changes, as well as more recent studies regarding the impacts of gender dysphoria on those with the condition and on their military service. The district court nonetheless preliminarily enjoined the 2025 policy based on its own contrary assessment of the evidence.”

The administration’s policy stems from a January initiative in which President Donald Trump signed two sweeping executive orders — the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” order and the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” order — both aimed at reestablishing merit-based military standards and ending identity-based preferences in defense operations.

The directives also instructed the Department of War to scrutinize gender-identity procedures and pronoun policies that had seeped into the ranks under prior leadership.

After the administration updated its transgender-service policy in March, government lawyers requested Judge Reyes lift her earlier injunction. Instead, Reyes used the hearing to berate Justice Department attorneys, even demanding comparisons between Pentagon spending on Viagra and the costs associated with gender-dysphoria treatments — a line of questioning that drew widespread criticism.

Hegseth himself blasted Reyes’ ruling on X.

“Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids…after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare,” he wrote.

In May, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to enforce the policy nationwide as lower-court challenges continued.

Another Parental-Rights Victory at the Supreme Court

Separately, the Supreme Court issued a major directive Monday in a case involving New York’s school vaccine mandate, which eliminated religious exemptions in 2019. The justices vacated a lower-court ruling that upheld the mandate and ordered judges to reconsider the case through the lens of parental rights.

The Amish families who brought the challenge argued that the state had trampled long-recognized religious freedoms, The Washington Times reported. Both a district court and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state — until now.

The nation’s highest court instructed the lower courts to reevaluate the dispute in light of last term’s landmark parental-rights decision rebuking Montgomery County, Maryland, for blocking opt-outs from LGBTQ-themed classroom instruction. By vacating the 2nd Circuit decision, the Supreme Court effectively wiped the ruling from the books.

Kelly Shackelford, president of First Liberty and counsel for the Amish families, called the order a critical win for religious liberty.

“The Amish community in New York wants to be left alone to live out their faith just like they have for 200 years,” he said. “The Amish take their faith very seriously and are simply asking the State of New York to respect their sincerely held beliefs.”

Taken together, the rulings highlight a broader trend under President Trump’s second-term judiciary: a renewed emphasis on constitutional rights, national readiness, and the restoration of common-sense standards after years of ideological drift.