It’s Coming, But When Is The Question

This month some of the Supreme Court cases will affect us, Trump ban on trans servicemembers is supposed to be one of the cases being heard, The Hill reported that…

Transgender military ban

The government is asking the Supreme Court to hear its appeal of three district court orders that have kept the administration from enforcing its ban on transgender people serving in the military.

Government attorneys bypassed normal judicial order in asking the Supreme Court to review the rulings together this term before rulings in the 9th and D.C. circuit courts.

Without the court’s intervention, the government argues it will be forced to maintain a policy which the military says poses a threat to "readiness, good order and discipline, sound leadership, and unit cohesion," components that the Pentagon says are "are essential to military effectiveness and lethality.”

The government has also asked the court to issue an emergency order that blocks the lower court rulings. The opposing parties’ response to that request is due by Dec. 28.

Will the Supreme Court jump over the lower courts? Or will it let the ban on Trump’s edict go through th normal appeal process?

Who are the trans servicemembers who will be affected by Trump’s bigotry.

The Faces Behind Transgender Troops’ Struggle for Acceptance
Meet some of the servicemembers at the center of one of the most controversial matters facing the U.S. military
Smithsonian
Photographs by Jeff Sheng; Text by Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
January 2019

[…]
It’s hard to know exactly how many transgender individuals are serving in the armed forces today. In a 2016 study, undertaken at the request of the Defense Department, the RAND Corporation put the number between 2,150 and 10,790. (These estimates were based on surveys of the general population.)

The study’s lead author, Agnes Gereben Schaefer, says only a small fraction of transgender people are likely to seek hormone treatment or surgery. “We estimated that between 30 and 140 active personnel would seek hormone treatment a year,” Schaefer says. “And between 25 to 100 would seek surgical treatment. That would cost between $2.4 million and $8.4 million a year. In terms of the Defense Department’s $6 billion budget, we’re talking about 0.04% to 0.1%.”

Readiness was another question the RAND study investigated. The researchers examined four of the 18 countries where transgender individuals are allowed to serve openly: Australia, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom. “The big takeaway is there hasn’t been a significant impact on unit cohesion or operational readiness,” Schaefer says.

What do their superior officers think about trans servicemembers?

With the fate of the ban still uncertain, we sent our photographer to meet five openly transgender members of the U.S. military. All but one of them told us they had full support from their superiors and other members of their units during their transitions. It’s unclear how typical their experiences were. In a survey included in this issue, only 39 percent of military personnel said they supported transgender people serving openly. But the people featured in this story said they were able to build on existing relationships to earn acceptance. “The younger men, especially, were like, ‘OK, cool, you seemed like one of the guys already,’” says Army National Guard member Adrian Rodriguez, who transitioned from female to male two years ago. “They were kind of expecting it.”

It seems like those who are against the ban are just Trump’s thugs.