Trump administration lawyers tie themselves in knots trying to defend trans military ban to judge
A federal judge is considering whether to strike down President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender service members in the U.S. military as defense officials begin removing trans troops from all branches.
District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C. is considering a motion for a preliminary injunction from 20 plaintiffs, including decorated U.S. military service members from across the branches, to block the Trump administration’s executive order effectively banning transgender service members from serving and additional policy guidance from taking effect.
In a disjointed five-hour hearing Wednesday that included a 30-minute break for government lawyers to get up to speed on relevant materials cited in a recent Department of Defense memo, the judge questioned the scope of the federal guidance, scrutinized the data it cited in its orders, and scolded the Justice Department attorneys’ lack of preparedness.
“Standing here today, you do not understand the scope of the ban,” Reyes told them. “You don’t understand the scope of the symptoms of gender dysphoria … You don’t know the answer to what ‘attempted to transition’ means.”
The hearing revolved around the language of two documents, one of which was a Pentagon memo issued last month that states that “the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
At one point, Jason Manion, a lawyer for the government, tried clarifying the scope, claiming the policy does not include all trans people.
But the judge then cited a Defense Department post on X from February 27: “Transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also shared the post from his official account.
“Do you think you can say one thing in public … and say another thing in court? This wasn’t some off-the-cuff remark at a cocktail party,” Reyes said.
The judge asked if he was using “loose language” but Manion argued Hegseth was using “shorthand.”
“I’m not going to speculate that he was just being sloppy when he said that. I’m going to take him at his word,” the judge said.
Reyes then asked government attorneys about the literature review and studies cited in the February 26 Pentagon memo. The government lawyer said he hadn’t read these materials. No one on the government’s legal team was prepared to answer questions about the relevant studies, Justice Department attorney Jason Lynch confessed. On February 19, Reyes warned Lynch that the studies were going to be important in her analysis, she said.
She then gave a 30-minute break for government lawyers to review the report and literature review.
Reyes also suggested officials “cherrypicked” parts of a study cited in Hegseth’s memo and “ignored” the context, noting that the memo didn’t compare non-transgender service members. “We can’t say anything about whether this data is meaningful without any point of comparison,” said the judge, calling the data used in the memo “meaningless.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s meaningless, it’s some data,” the government attorney argued.
