President Trump, despite his Twitter claim that he consulted his generals before announcing a ban on transgender people in the military last summer, appears to have acted without the advice of experts and senior leadership, according to a U.S. district judge in Seattle.
The federal district court, where Trump is being sued over the policy, had ordered the Justice Department to turn over evidence backing Trump’s tweeted claim that he would restrict transgender service “after consultation with my Generals and military experts.”
But the department argued that the information is privileged and beyond the court’s reach, and it never provided White House logs showing Trump’s meetings in the run-up to the tweet.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman declined to remove Trump as a defendant and decided the lawsuit by active-duty transgender troops and prospective recruits will proceed to trial.
“Defendants to date have failed to identify even one general or military expert he consulted, despite having been ordered to do so repeatedly,” Pechman wrote in the decision. “Indeed, the only evidence concerning the lead-up to his Twitter announcement reveals that military officials were entirely unaware of the ban, and that the abrupt change in policy was ‘unexpected.’”
Trump made the Twitter announcement on July 26 that he would reverse the Obama administration’s decision to allow open transgender service, a move that surprised many at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.
[Related: Trump cancels all-out ban on transgender troops, will allow some to serve]
“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” Trump tweeted. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, emailed the military chiefs a day later acknowledging Trump’s announcement was “unexpected” and laying out a brief plan for how to deal with it.
“P.S. When asked, I will state that I was not consulted,” Dunford wrote in a follow-up email response a few hours later.
Pechman also pointed to reports that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was given one day notice of Trump’s decision and the tweet led to some initial confusion in the administration.
“As no other persons have ever been identified by defendants — despite repeated court orders to do so — the court is led to conclude that the ban was devised by the president, and the president alone,” she wrote.
Mattis and the Pentagon have since spent months reviewing the body of research on transgender people and devised a detailed new personnel policy that would bar many from serving in the military. It would also deny treatment such as hormone therapy and surgery to transgender troops who are already serving.
The nearly 1,000 transgender troops now serving and receiving treatment would be able to continue.
But the Pentagon is blocked from instating the proposed policy by four federal injunctions, including one granted by the Seattle court, while the cases are being heard. Pechman on Friday granted the plaintiffs’ request to keep the injunction in place.
