On Friday, February 7, US District Judge Marsha Pechman issued yet another in a series of Orders on discovery in Karnoski v. Trump, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 21813 (W.D. Wash.), one of the four challenges to the constitutionality of Trump’s transgender military service ban in its current incarnation, referred to as the Mattis Plan.
Pechman, backed up by a 9th Circuit panel, has determined that the ban discriminates based on gender identity and is subject … <Read More>
U.S. Senior District Judge Marsha J. Pechman issued an opinion on June 15, rejecting another attempt by the Trump Administration to get her to lift her preliminary injunction in Karnoski v. Trump and allow the latest version of President Trump’s ban on military service by transgender individuals to go into effect while they appeal her earlier rulings to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Hope springs eternal at the Justice Department, as their new … <Read More>
In a move intended to evade existing preliminary injunctions while reaffirming in its essential elements President Trump’s Twitter announcement from last July categorically prohibiting military service by transgender individuals, the Administration issued three new documents on Friday afternoon, March 23, the date that the President had designated in an August 2017 Memorandum for his announced policy to take effect. A new Presidential Memorandum “revoked” Trump’s August Memo and authorized the Defense and Homeland Security Secretaries … <Read More>
In a blunt rebuke to President Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, discerning no factual basis for Trump’s July 26 tweet decreeing a ban on military service by transgender people or the August 25 Memorandum fleshing out the decreed policy, issued a preliminary injunction on October 30, the effect of which is “to revert to the status quo with regard to accession and retention that existed before the issuance of the Presidential Memorandum – … <Read More>