The Trump administration’s actions to ban transgender people from the military have been blocked by a federal judge who was nominated by former President Joe Biden.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, the first Hispanic woman and openly LGBTQ person to serve on the Washington, D.C. federal court, denied efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to dismiss her ruling blocking the executive order to ban transgenders from the military. A notice of appeal has since been filed by the Department of Defense in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
“On March 21, the defendants in the suit, who include Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, filed a motion to dissolve the injunction blocking the Pentagon’s ban. The filing argued that the policy is not an overarching ban but instead ‘turns on gender dysphoria – a medical condition – and does not discriminate against trans-identifying persons as a class,'” Fox News reported.
“The government cited new guidance issued March 21 that it expected to enact the policy if not for the ongoing litigation. The guidance clarified that ‘the phrase ‘exhibit symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria’’ solely applies to ‘individuals who exhibit such symptoms as would be sufficient to constitute a diagnosis,'” the outlet added.
Reyes, who presided over the March 21 hearing, asked the Department of Defense to delay the policy’s original March 26 deadline for enactment.
“Defendants re-emphasize their ‘consistent position that the [Hegseth] Policy is concerned with the military readiness, deployability, and costs associated with a medical condition,’” the judge wrote in her order. “Regulating gender dysphoria is no different than regulating bipolar disorder, eating disorders, or suicidality. The Military Ban regulates a medical condition, they insist, not people. And therein lies the problem.”
“Gender dysphoria is not like other medical conditions, something Defendants well know,” Reyes added. “It affects only one group of people: all persons with gender dysphoria are transgender and only transgender persons experience gender dysphoria.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth fired back at Reyes in a mocking social media post.
“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 on X.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2025
Trump’s January 27 order does not use the word “transgender,” but said that those “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.
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