Federal judge denies Trump administration attempt to block order limiting transgender military ban

Several US federal courts have blocked the transgender ban from being enforced

The ban was originally announced last year by the president on Twitter (Getty Images)

A federal judge has denied a request to block or limit an order that temporarily prohibits the government from enforcing a ban on transgender troops in the US military, in the latest legal setback for the Trump administration as it aims to regulate who can serve in the American armed forces.

The request was denied in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that the court is not convinced that the US government would be irreparably harmed without a stay of the October 2017 preliminary injunction that stayed President Donald Trump's plan to keep transgender troops out of the military.

"Without supporting evidence, defendants’ bare assertion that the Court’s injunction poses a threat to military readiness is insufficient to overcome the public interest in ensuring that the government does not engage in unconstitutional and discriminatory conduct", Ms Kollar-Kotelly wrote in the court's decision.

She continued: “After all, ‘it must be remembered that all Plaintiffs seek during this litigation is to serve their nation with honour and dignity, volunteering to face extreme hardships, to endure lengthy deployments and separation from family and friends, and to willingly make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives if necessary to protect the Nation, the people of the United States, and the Constitution against all who would attack them’”.

The Trump administration asked that the Supreme Court last week to consider lower court decisions blocking the transgender military ban, which Mr Trump announced on Twitter last year. In announcing his proposed ban, Mr Trump tweeted that the US would no longer "accept or allow" transgender Americans to serve in the nation's armed services, and said that those troops result in "tremendous medical costs and disruption".

Since then, the Trump administration has changed the focus of the ban to individuals with a history of gender dysphoria, but federal judges in three jurisdictions have refused to lift the original block on the ban in light of its more limited scope.

There are believed to be somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 active- and reserve-duty transgender service members in the US military, having been allowed to join the armed services after an Obama administration rules change.

The current policy that the Trump administration hopes to enforce would block transgender people from serving in the military if they experience gender dysphoria. That condition is defined as distress between a person's assigned gender at birth, and a person's gender identity.

The American Psychiatric Association says that not all transgender people experience gender dysphoria.