Federal court blocks trans military ban (for now)

Though overshadowed by today’s big news, another big development is the fact that federal judge has blocked Trump’s attempt to kick trans troops out of the armed forces:

Trump announced in an August memo that he intended to reverse course on a 2016 policy that allowed troops to serve openly as transgender individuals. He said he would order a return to the policy prior to June 2016, under which service members could be discharged for being transgender.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote Monday that transgender members of the military who had sued over the change were likely to win their lawsuit and barred the Trump administration from reversing course.

[…]

Kollar-Kotelly said in her opinion that the president’s directives are “not genuinely based on legitimate concerns regarding military effectiveness or budget constraints, but are instead driven by a desire to express disapproval of transgender people generally.”

When a judge smacks you down and says they can see through your pretense to the underlying bigotry, you should probably stop right there. Of course, there will almost inevitably be appeals and attempts to rewrite the ban, so this is hardly over. But it’s still satisfying to imagine the sort of nightmarish day Trump is having.