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Posts Tagged ‘Karnoski v. Trump’

Passport Denial Violates Transgender Man’s Equal Protection Rights

Posted on: November 29th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

U.S. District Judge Gloria M. Navarro ruled on November 23 that the State Department violated the 5th Amendment Equal Protection rights of Oliver Bruce Morris, a transgender man, by refusing to issue him a passport identifying him as male unless he could provide a doctor’s certification of clinical treatment for gender transition.  Morris v. Pompeo, 2020 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 219009 (D. Nevada).  Judge Navarro rejected Morris’s claim that the denial violated his due process rights, and abstained from deciding his Administrative Procedure Act claim on the ground that the relief ordered by the court – to process the passport application without requiring the physician’s letter – had mooted that claim.

Morris, who was identified as female at birth but has identified as male for several years, has health insurance but it doesn’t cover gender transition surgery.  He has been receiving hormone treatment, which is covered by his insurance, under the care of a licensed practical nurse.  He is identified as male on his driver’s license, and obtained a legal name change from a Nevada court.

Morris applied for a 10-year passport in October 2018. “On the application’s checkbox for ‘Sex,’” wrote Judge Navarro, “Plaintiff checked the ‘M’ box, indicating male. Plaintiff included three identity documents in his application: a Nevada driver’s license, which indicates his sex is male; an original copy of his birth certificate, which indicates his sex is female; and a court-ordered name change, indicating that he legally changed his name from “Chanesse Olivia Morris” to “Oliver Bruce Morris” on June 27, 2018.”

Evidently the bureaucrats at the State Department were stymied by the inconsistency between the driver’s license, the name-change court order, and the birth certificate, concerning Morris’s gender.  He received a letter asking him to “verify his sex,” wrote Judge Navarro. “The letter explained, ‘[i]n order to issue you a passport card reflecting a sex different from the one on some or all of your citizenship and/or identity evidence, please send us a signed original statement on office letterhead from your attending medical physician.’ The letter enumerated the information Plaintiff’s physician would have to certify under penalty of perjury, including, ‘[l]anguage stating that you have had appropriate clinical treatment for transition to the new sex.”

Now Morris was stymied, since he is not under a physician’s care, which would not be covered by his health insurance for this purpose.  As a person of limited means, he was being assisted on this application be a legal services attorney, who sent a letter on his behalf “explaining he would not provide the requested certification because he could not afford gender transition treatment, and the requirement violated his constitutional rights.”  The State Department sent several “final notices” repeating the request for a physician’s letter before denying the application due to Morris’s failure to “verify” his sex.  Nevada Legal Services attorneys Christena Georgas-Burns and David A. Olshan then filed suit on his behalf.

The complaint claims that the denial of the passport violated Morris’s 5th Amendment Due Process rights, alleging that he has a constitutional right to refuse medical treatment for gender transition, and his Equal Protection rights, arguing that because cisgender people are not required to provide a physician’s verification of their sex in order to get a proper passport, such a requirement cannot be posed to transgender people.   He also alleged that the barriers the State Department has erected in his case are outside the scope of its authority under the Administrative Procedure Act.  The government moved for summary judgment on the APA claim and to dismiss the constitutional claims, and Morris countered with a motion for summary judgment on all his claims.

The court rejected Morris’s Due Process claim, reasoning that the government is not requiring Morris to submit to surgical treatment in order to get a passport, as they would be happy to issue him a passport with a sex designation consistent with his birth certificate.  That sounds a bit nonsensical, since a passport with his male name and picture and a female sex designation would undoubtedly lead to problems should he try to use it as identification, especially in international travel.  Perhaps his Due Process claim would have gotten further by relying on the right to autonomy and self-identification mentioned by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas, but that theory was not argued on the summary judgment motion by Morris.  Be that as it may, however, the court’s acceptance of his Equal Protection claim renders the loss on the Due Process claim harmless in this context.

As to the Equal Protection claim, Judge Navarro’s ruling on Morris’s summary judgment motion treated his claim as an as-applied claim rather than a facial unconstitutionality claim, because of the particular proof issues in deciding the plaintiff’s summary judgment motion on a claim of discrimination that merits heightened scrutiny.  There is caselaw in the 9th Circuit – specifically, the circuit’s ruling in Karnoski v. Trump, 926 F.3d 1180, 1201 (9th Cir. 2019) – holding that the federal government faces heightened scrutiny when it is challenged for applying a policy in a way that discriminates against a transgender person.  (In Karnoski, the court was considering President Trump’s transgender military service ban, as concretized by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in a policy implemented in April 2019.)  Morris’s complaint alleges facts sufficient to sustain a claim of unequal treatment.  Under heightened scrutiny, the government bears the burden on summary judgment of providing an “exceedingly persuasive justification” for imposing its requirement of a physician’s statement to verify a person’s sex and certifying clinical transitional treatment as a prerequisite to getting a passport consistent with the person’s gender identity.

Judge Navarro found that the government’s summary judgment motion was not accompanied by such proof, as it consisted of generalized statements about the importance of the passport as an identity document. “Here,” she wrote, “the Government frames its purported interest too broadly and fails to provide evidence that the interest is exceedingly persuasive. Defendant asserts interests in verifying passport applicants’ identities and ‘[i]ssuing passports that accurately state the bearer’s identity[.]’ There is little doubt that the State Department has an interest in accurately representing the identities of U.S. citizens to foreign nations. However, the only facet of identity at issue here is a passport applicant’s sex or gender. Defendant has provided no explanation, let alone any evidence, of why the State Department has an important interest in verifying a transgender passport applicant’s gender identity, nor a cogent explanation of why the Policy requiring a physician’s certification increases the accuracy of issued passports. Assuming, arguendo, that Defendant has a substantial interest in verifying transgender applicants’ gender identities, he has not shown why a doctor’s certification substantially furthers the interest with respect to transgender applicants given that not all transgender persons receive or require physician treatment.”

In other words, the court implicitly accepts the plaintiff’s argument that one’s gender identity and appropriate sex designation on a passport is not an artifact of genitalia.  One can be a transgender person and entitled to recognition as such without undergoing gender confirmation surgery.  The requirement for a physician to certify “clinical” treatment for transition is not supported by an “exceedingly persuasive” explanation here.

“Given that Plaintiff has prevailed on his equal protection claim,” wrote Judge Navarro, “the Court orders Defendant to review Plaintiff’s passport application without requiring a physician’s certification of Plaintiff’s gender. If Plaintiff’s application is otherwise sufficient under the relevant State Department regulations, Defendant shall issue Plaintiff a 10-year passport. As the Plaintiff has succeeded on his as-applied challenge, the Court declines to address whether the Policy is facially unconstitutional.”  And, as noted above, having provided Morris exactly what he is seeking under his constitutional claim, the court found it unnecessary to rule on the merits of his APA claim.

Thus, the government’s motion to dismiss the constitutional claims was granted as to the Due Process claim and denied as to the Equal Protection claim, and the Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment was granted as to the Equal Protection claim and denied as to the Due Process claim, while the APA claim was dismissed as moot.

Judge Navarro was appointed to the district court by President Barack Obama in 2010.

Federal Court in Trans Military Case Refuses to Delay Discovery Further

Posted on: February 10th, 2020 by Art Leonard No Comments

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 to heightened scrutiny under the 5th Amendment’s equal protection requirement, and judging from this opinion she is clearly getting fed up by the Justice Department’s delay strategy in the case.

Since the Supreme Court stayed Judge Pechman’s preliminary injunction (and ultimately, all the preliminary injunctions were lifted), the Mattis Plan went into effect last April while the litigation continues, including clear discrimination against applicants and service members due to their gender identity. The Justice Department’s strategy now is to avoid a merits ruling against the government by stretching out discovery as long as possible.

The district courts have already determined that various deliberative process privilege claims asserted by the government are invalid in this suit, where the question boils down to whether the Mattis Plan is an expression of ideology, pure and simple, or rather is based on objective facts. Only discovery of internal communications and sources allegedly relied upon in formulating the policy can reveal the answer to the degree necessary to constitute proof in a court. But they keep stalling.

Judge Pechman issued an order late last year compelling certain disclosure by a date specified in December. Rather than comply, the Justice Department moved for “clarification” and a “stay pending appeal.” That is, they want to keep off responding as long as they can, and then get the court to delay further while they appeal every discovery ruling to the 9th Circuit, building in several more months for delay.

Pechman is having none of it: Her February 7 order provides some “clarification” and denies the stay. “Because Plaintiffs have overcome the deliberate process privilege for these documents and this dispute has been pending for nearly two years, the Court will not issue a stay for an unspecified amount of time while Defendants decide whether to appeal,” she wrote. “This is an ongoing process and until the process is complete it is wasteful to appeal one segment at a time.” She also pointed out that the government missed a 14-day deadline if it wanted her to reconsider her prior discovery order. She ordered the government to produce all the documents covered by the order by February 14.

Karnoski and co-plaintiffs are represented by Lambda Legal and Outserve-SLDN (so named when the case was filed, now the Modern Military Association).

9th Circuit Instructs District Court on Next Stage in Trans Military Litigation

Posted on: June 18th, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a ruling on June 14 on several appeals filed by the Justice Department in Karnoski v. Trump, one of the lawsuits challenging President Trump’s transgender military policy.  The result was not a complete win for the government or the plaintiffs, but the case will go forward before U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman in Seattle using different legal tests than those she had employed in issuing the rulings that the government had appealed.  Because one of the other challenges to the policy is pending in a district court in Riverside, California, which is also within the 9th Circuit, the court’s ruling effectively applies to both cases.  Karnoski v. Trump, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 17878, 2019 WL 2479442 (9th Cir., June 14, 2019).

Since neither party is likely to be fully satisfied with the ruling, which does not fully embrace either party’s position on the appeals, it is possible that one or both will seek reconsideration by a larger panel of the circuit court.  In the 9th Circuit, such panels consist of the Chief Judge of the Circuit and ten active circuit judges drawn at random, together with any senior judges who sat on the panel.  The panel that issued the June 14 ruling had two senior judges – Raymond C. Fisher and Richard R. Clifton – and one active judge, Conseulo M. Callahan.  Fisher was appointed by Bill Clinton, while Clifton and Callahan were appointed by George W. Bush.  District Judge Pechman was appointed by Bill Clinton.

For purposes of simplicity, this description of where the lawsuit stands will refer to the policy announced by then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter in June 2016 as the 2016 policy, the policy announced in tweets and a White House memorandum by President Donald Trump in July and August 2017 as the 2017 policy, and the policy recommended to Trump by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis in February 2018 as the 2018 policy.

The 2016 policy ended the long-standing regulatory ban on military service by transgender people, but delayed allowing transgender people to enlist until July 2017.  In June 2017, Secretary Mattis announced that the ban on enlistment would be extended to the end of 2017.  The July tweet and August 2017 memorandum announced a return to the ban on service and enlistment that predated the 2016 policy, but delayed re-implementation of the ban until March 2018, pending submission of an implementation plan to the president by Mattis, while providing that the ban on enlistment would remain in effect.

The plan Mattis recommended in February 2018, and that Trump authorized him to adopt, abandoned the total ban concept and is complicated to explain. The policy attempted to shift its focus, at least in terms of concept, from transgender status to the condition of gender dysphoria as described in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.  The 2018 plan allows some transgender people to serve under certain conditions, depending upon whether and when they were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, whether and when they intended to transition or had transitioned, and whether they were willing to serve in their gender as identified at birth.  People who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria were barred from enlisting, and currently serving transgender personnel who had not been diagnosed and initiated the process of transitioning by the time the 2018 policy went into effect could continue serving only if they foreswore transitioning while in the service.  However, those who were serving and had begun transitioning before the 2018 policy went into effect could continue serving in the gender to which they had transitioned.  People who identify as transgender but have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and are content to serve in the gender identified at birth can enlist and serve, but must leave the service if they are subsequently diagnosed with gender dysphoria.  The bottom line, which was a motivation for Trump’s initial tweet, is that once the 2018 policy was in place, the military would not be funding sex-reassignment surgery for anyone and people could not transition in the military.

Beginning in August 2017 and continuing through that summer, challengers file four lawsuits challenging the 2017 policy on constitutional grounds in Baltimore, Washington (D.C.), Seattle, and Riverside (California).  All of the major LGBT litigation groups were representing the plaintiff in one or more of the cases.  Within months, each of the federal district judges had granted motions for preliminary injunctions to prevent the 2017 policy from going into effect.  In order to issue the injunctions, all four judges had to find that some or all of the plaintiffs’ legal arguments had a fair chance of succeeding on the merits, and that the injunctions were necessary to prevent irreparable harm to the plaintiffs by preserving the status quo without harming the public interest.  The district judges refused to “stay” their injunctions, and on the east coast they were backed up by the 4th and D.C. Circuits, leading the government to abandon an attempt to appeal the denial of stays for the west coast cases in the 9th Circuit.  The district judges also rejected motions by the government to dismiss the cases.  Thus, on January 1, 2018, the Defense Department was required to accept enlistment applications from transgender people, and the 2016 policy remained in effect for transgender people who were actively serving in the military.

Meanwhile, Secretary Mattis appointed a Task Force as directed by the August 2017 White House memo to prepare a report in support of an implementation policy recommendation, which he submitted to the White House in February 2018, urging the president to revoke the 2017 policy and to allow Mattis to implement his recommended policy.  The Task Force was described in various ways at various times by the government, but the names and titles of the members were not listed in the written report released to the public, and the government has resisted discovery requests for their identity and information about how the Task Force report was prepared.

Once Secretary Mattis had the go-ahead from Trump to implement his recommendation, the Justice Department moved in all four courts to get the preliminary injunctions lifted, arguing that the 2018 policy was sufficiently different from the 2017 policy to render the existing injunctions irrelevant.  All four of the district judges rejected that argument and refused to dissolve or modify their injunctions.  The government appealed and ultimately was able to persuade the Supreme Court earlier this year to stay the injunctions and allow the policy to go into effect early in April. Although the 2018 policyhas been in effect for over two months, there have not been reports about discharges of serving transgender personnel.

Significantly, the 9th Circuit panel implied without ruling that the preliminary injunction against the 2017 policy seemed justified.

Meanwhile, the parties in the four cases were litigating about the plaintiffs’ attempts to conduct discovery on order to surface the information necessary to prove their constitutional claims against the policy.  The government fought the discovery requests doggedly, arguing that the internal workings of its military policy-making should not be subject to disclosure in civil litigation, referring to but not formally invoking concepts of decisional privilege and executive privilege, which courts have recognized to varying extent in prior cases challenging government policies.

In the Karnoski case in Seattle, Judge Pechman was highly skeptical about the government’s arguments, having questioned whether the policies were motivated by politics rather than professional military judgment, and she issued an order for the government to comply with a large portion of the requests for documents and information after prolonged negotiations by the lawyers largely came to naught.  The government appealed her discovery orders to the 9th Circuit, together with refusal to rethink the preliminary injunction in light of the substitution of the 2018 policy for the 2017 policy.

The June 14 opinion describes how the case should go forward, taking account of the Supreme Court’s action in having stayed the preliminary injunctions but not dissolved them.  The 9th Circuit panel agreed with the D.C. Circuit, which had concluded earlier in the year that the D.C. district court was wrong to conclude that the 2018 policy was just a version of the 2017 policy with some exceptions.  The appellate courts held that the 2018 policy recommended by Mattis was no longer the total ban announced in 2017, so the district court should evaluate the 2018 policy.

The court rejected the government’s argument that shifting the exclusionary policy from “transgender status” to “gender dysphoria” eliminated the equal protection issue, finding from the wording of the Task Force report and the policy as summarized in writing by Mattis that the policy continued to target transgender people in various ways, regardless whether they have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, through the conditions it places on their service.  This was a “win” for the plaintiffs on an important contested point.

Judge Pechman had concluded that gender identity is a “suspect classification,” so for purposes of evaluating the constitutionality of the policy under an Equal Protection challenge, it should be presumed unconstitutional with a heavy burden placed on the government to prove a compelling need for the policy.  The 9th Circuit panel decided there was not sufficient precedent to support that approach, but did agree with the position taken by the district judges in the other three cases that the policy should be subjected to “heightened scrutiny,” similar to the approach courts take in sex discrimination cases, but tempered by consideration of the degree to which the policy merits deference as a product of professional military judgment.

Judge Pechman had concluded that the 2017 policy did not merit judicial deference, because there was no evidence before the court that it was the product of professional military judgment.  Rather, as all the district judges had concluded, based on the way the policy was announced in a surprise tweet and the failure of the government to provide any information about how it was formulated, the court’s analysis should not be tempered by judicial deference.

Now, however, said the 9th Circuit panel, the government had described, in a general way, how Mattis’s Task Force was put together, and t the 2018 policy was allegedly the result of many meetings, study, much interviewing of military personnel, and a 44—page report.  If one accepts the government’s description of the process – still not identifying by name the Task Force members or getting into any real detail about the basis for their conclusions – the court said, there is an argument that the 2018 policy should be accorded judicial deference, but whether to do so, and how that would interrelate with the heightened scrutiny standard, were questions to be addressed by the district court.  Thus, the task for Judge Pechman now is to determine whether the 2018 policy is sufficiently a product of military judgment to justify applying a deferential standard of review.  Some degree of cooperating by the government in the discovery process is crucially necessary for such an analysis to take place.

However, as to discovery, the 9th Circuit panel expressed concern that Judge Pechman had not accorded sufficient weight to the concepts of decisional and executive privilege in formulating her discovery order, and directed that she refer to guidelines set out in some recent court opinions.  In particular, the court disagreed with her order that the government provide detailed privilege logs with descriptions of all the documents for which there were privilege concerns, and suggested that an approach focused on broadly described categories of documents and information could suffice for an initial determination of the degree to which privilege might be claimed to block disclosure.

The bottom line is that the Karnoski case goes back to Judge Pechman for a fresh analysis of whether plaintiffs should be entitled to a preliminary injunction against the 2018 policy, using heightened scrutiny and taking account of privilege claims in the discovery process, along the lines outlined by the court.  This opinion also sends a message to the district court in Riverside, where similar government motions are pending.  Meanwhile, the discovery battles continue in the cases pending in Baltimore and Washington.

In light of the Trump Administration’s general policy of fighting against demands for disclosure of internal executive branch decision-making, whether by Congressional committees or litigants, it is difficult to predict when there will be sufficient discovery to provide a basis for further rulings on preliminary injunctions or the ultimate merits of the four court challenges.  The lawsuits succeed in blocking implementation of the total ban and the 2017 policy, and in delaying implementation of the 2018 policy for more than a year.

The litigation will not be finally resolved before Inauguration Day in January 2021 unless the Trump Administration is willing to negotiate some sort of compromise settlement satisfactory to the plaintiffs.  If any of the current Democratic presidential candidates is elected and takes office, a quickly-issued executive order restoring the 2016 policy could put an end to the entire transgender military service drama and restore sanity to an issue that has been clouded by politics and substantial misinformation, such as Trump’s recent grossly-exaggerated statements about the cost of health care for transgender personnel.

Supreme Court Stays Two Preliminary Injunctions Against Transgender Military Ban, Leaving Only One Injunction in Place

Posted on: January 22nd, 2019 by Art Leonard No Comments

On January 22 the Supreme Court granted applications by Solicitor General Noel Francisco to stay the two nationwide preliminary injunctions that were issued in December 2017 by U.S. District Judges on the West Coast to stop President Donald Trump’s ban on military service by transgender individuals from going into effect. The vote was 5-4, with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan indicating that they would have denied the applications for stays. Although the stays mean that the Trump Administration’s transgender military ban is no longer blocked by those two injunctions, it is still blocked by an injunction issued by a federal judge in Baltimore.

The Supreme Court issued these two stays “pending disposition of the Government’s appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of the Government’s petition for a writ of certiorari, if such writ is sought.” At the same time, the Supreme Court denied the Solicitor General’s petitions to leapfrog the 9th Circuit and take its appeal of the district court actions for direct review. These petitions were practically rendered moot, at least for now, by the Supreme Court’s granting of the stays. When the Court made its announcement at 9:30 am on January 22, the 9th Circuit had not yet ruled, although a three-judge panel heard oral arguments on the government’s appeal several months ago.

The Supreme Court’s action did not immediately allow the Defense Department to implement the ban, however. That awaits a ruling by U.S. District Judge George L. Russell, III, who is still considering the government’s motion to dissolve the nationwide preliminary injunction issued on November 21, 2017, by now-retired U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis in Baltimore in Stone v. Trump. That case was reassigned to Judge Russell after Judge Garbis retired last June. On November 30, Judge Russell issued his only ruling in the case so far, largely affirming an August 14 ruling by Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite on disputed discovery issues in the case. However, in his November 30 ruling, Judge Russell rejected the government’s contention that certain “findings of fact” by Judge Copperthite were unreasonable. Among those were Copperthite’s finding that the version of the ban announced by Defense Secretary James Mattis in February 2018, which Trump authorized Mattis to put into effect, was still a ban on military service by transgender people, despite differences from the version described by the White House in an August 2017 memorandum.

On January 4, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated a similar preliminary injunction that was issued on October 31, 2017, by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District Court in Washington, D.C., and directed Judge Kollar-Kotelly to reconsider her conclusion that the version of the ban that President Trump authorized Mattis to implement was essentially the same ban that she had enjoined. The D.C. Circuit panel unanimously ruled, based on the government’s allegations about the differences in the policies, that her conclusion was “clearly erroneous.” The D.C. Circuit’s ruling was, of course, not binding on Judge Russell, because Maryland is under the jurisdiction of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, but it may influence Judge Russell’s consideration of that issue while he ponders how to rule on the government’s motion pending in his court.

The government’s position in all four of the pending cases challenging the constitutionality of the ban has been that the “Mattis Policy” announced in February 2018 was significantly different from the version of the ban described in Trump’s August 2017 Memorandum, and thus that the four preliminary injunctions against the August 2017 version should be vacated as moot.

The government now takes the position that the so-called “Mattis Policy,” which bans service by individuals who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, is no longer a categorical ban of all transgender service members, as described in Trump’s notorious tweets of July 26, 2017. For one thing, the Mattis Policy carves out an exception, allowing transgender individuals who are already serving to continue doing so despite being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, although those who have not transitioned when the new policy goes into effect will not be allowed to do so and still remain in the service. (This exception, of course, contradicts the government’s argument that individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria are not fit to serve.) For another thing, the Defense Department contends that because not all individuals who identify as transgender have either been diagnosed with gender dysphoria or desire to make a medical transition, the basis for the disqualification for military service has effectively been shifted by the Mattis Policy from gender identity to gender dysphoria. As such, the government argues, the district courts’ conclusion that the ban discriminates on the basis of transgender status in violation of Equal Protection no longer applies. Instead, the ban is based on a medical condition, as to which the courts should defer to military expertise, because courts have never second-guessed the military’s determination that people with a diagnosed medical condition may be unfit to serve.

The Supreme Court’s action does not grant the government’s request to dissolve the preliminary injunctions that were issued in December 2017 by District Judges Marsha J. Pechman (Seattle) and Jesus Bernal (Riverside, California), and thus should not be interpreted as taking a position on whether those injunctions should have been issued, but merely agrees to the government’s request to stay their effect while the 9th Circuit decides how to rule on the government’s appeal from those district judges’ denial of the government’s motions to dissolve the injunctions. In the meantime, all four district courts are dealing with contentious arguments as the government refuses to comply with the plaintiffs’ discovery demands, making it difficult for the courts to proceed with the cases. These cases are raising significant issues about the extent to which the government should be forced to disclose details of its decision-making process that are crucial to determining whether the policy they are now defending was adopted for constitutionally impermissible reasons.

Attention now focuses on Judge Russell, whose eventual ruling on the government’s motion to dissolve Judge Garbis’s preliminary injunction will decide, at least for the moment, whether the transgender ban goes into effect or remains blocked while the litigation continues. If Judge Russell follows the lead of the other district judges, he will deny the motion and Solicitor General Francisco will likely petition the Supreme Court to grant a stay similar to the ones issued on January 22. The question now is whether Judge Russell finds the D.C. Circuit’s analysis to be persuasive. If he does, the ban may go into effect, even as all four cases challenging the ban continue to be fiercely litigated by the plaintiffs.

As to the stays issued on January 22, the Supreme Court’s Order says that if the government is dissatisfied with the 9th Circuit’s disposition of its appeals and files new Petitions for Supreme Court review, the stays will remain in effect. If the Court ultimately denies such petitions, “this order shall terminate automatically.” If the Court grants those petitions, the stay would remain in effect until the Supreme Court rules on the appeal.

Trump Administration Suffers More Setbacks in Defending Transgender Military Ban

Posted on: August 14th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

Two federal district judges have issued new rulings in lawsuits challenging the Trump Administration’s ban on military service by transgender individuals, mainly adverse to the government.  [Addendum:  After this was drafted, we received a decision from a federal magistrate judge in Baltimore on discovery issues in one of the other challenged to the transgender ban.  Our summary appears at the end of this posting.]

After the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit refused to lift Seattle U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman’s preliminary injunction against the policy on July 18, she issued a new ruling on July 27 granting the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery and denying the government’s motion for a protective order that would shield President Trump from having to respond to any discovery requests.  The Justice Department immediately announced that it would appeal this ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Judge Pechman had previously denied motions for summary judgment in the case, having found that there was a need for discovery before such a ruling could take place.

On August 6, D.C. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had issued the first preliminary injunction against the policy last year, issued two decisions. In one, she rejected the government’s request to vacate her preliminary injunction as moot, finding that the plaintiffs have standing to challenge the “new” policy described by Defense Secretary James Mattis in his February 2018 memo to the President, and agreeing with Judge Pechman that the “new” policy is not essentially different from the “old” one announced by President Trump a year ago. However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted a motion by the government to dismiss President Trump as an individual named defendant in the case.

Two other lawsuits challenging the policy are pending in federal district courts in Riverside, California, and Baltimore, Maryland. In both cases, the judges have received motions from the parties that are awaiting decision, similar to those filed with Judges Pechman and Kollar-Kotelly.

To recap for those coming late to this story, Trump tweeted a ban on transgender military service on July 26, 2017, and issued a memorandum a month later describing the policy in slightly more detail, charging Secretary Mattis to propose a plan for implementation by late February, 2018, with the goal of implementing the policy later in March. Trump’s memo specified that Mattis’s previous directive to allow transgender applicants to join the military, which had been announced at the end of June 2017 to go into effect on January 1, 2018, was to be indefinitely delayed, as Trump’s policy would not allow transgender people to enlist.  Mattis announced that no action would be taken against now-serving transgender personnel pending the implementation of the policy in March 2018, but there were reports of transgender personnel suffering cancellations of promotions and desire assignments and of planned medical procedures after the policy was announced.

Mattis’s memo to the president in February proposed some modifications to the policy that had been announced in Trump’s August memorandum. Transgender personnel who were already serving and had transitioned and were “stable” in their preferred gender would be allowed to continue serving, based on a determination that the investment in their training outweighed whatever “risk” they posed to the readiness of the military.  Furthermore, transgender individuals who had not transitioned or been diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be allowed to enlist and serve, provided they refrained from transitioning and served in the sex identified at birth.  Otherwise, those diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” would be prohibited from enlisting or serving, and those who could not comply with these requirements would be discharged.  The proposal was based on a “finding” by a rigged special committee apparently dominated by committed opponents of transgendered service that allowing transgender people to serve in the military was harmful to the operational efficiency of the service – a finding based on no factual evidence and oblivious to the fact that transgender people had been serving openly without any problems since the Obama Administration lifted the prior ban at the end of June 2016.

Four lawsuits had been filed in response to the summer 2017 policy announcement, and in a matter of months the four district courts had issued preliminary injunctions, having found it likely that the plaintiffs would prevail on their argument that the policy violates the Equal Protection requirements of the 5th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. As compelled by the preliminary injunctions, the Defense Department allowed transgender people to submit applications to enlist beginning January 1, 2018, after losing a last-ditch court battle to continue the enlistment ban, but there were reports that the applications they received were getting very slow processing, and all indications are that few have been accepted for service.

Trump responded to Mattis’s February 2018 memo by “withdrawing” his prior memo and tweet, and authorizing Mattis to adopt the implementation plan he was recommending by late March. The Justice Department then filed motions in all the lawsuits seeking to lift the preliminary injunctions. Their argument was, in part, that the “new” policy was sufficiently different from the one that had been “withdrawn” as to moot the lawsuits. They further contended that the plaintiffs who were already serving and would be allowed to continue serving under the “new” policy no longer had standing to challenge the policy in court.  The Department also argued that plaintiff’s attempts to conduct discovery in the case should be put on hold until there was a definitive appellate ruling on their motion to lift the preliminary injunctions.

On April 13, Judge Pechman rejected the government’s motion to lift the preliminary injunction, having already ordered that discovery proceed. In his initial tweet, Trump had claimed that he had consulted with generals and other experts before adopting the policy, but the identities of these people were not revealed, and the government has stonewalled against any attempt to discover their identities or any internal executive branch documents that might have been generated on this issue, making generalized claims of executive privilege.  Similarly, the February memorandum released under Mattis’s name did not identify any of the individuals responsible for its composition, and naturally the plaintiffs are also seeking to discover who was involved in putting it together and what information they purported to rely upon.

Judge Pechman’s July 27 order to compel discovery specified the materials sought by the plaintiffs, and pointed out that under federal evidentiary rules, any claim of privilege against disclosure is subject to evaluation by the court. “The deliberative privilege is not absolute,” she wrote.  “Several courts have recognized that the privilege does not apply in cases involving claims of governmental misconduct or where the government’s intent is at issue.”

The question, under 9th Circuit precedents, is “whether plaintiffs’ need for the materials and the need for accurate fact-finding override the government’s interest in non-disclosure.  In making this determination, relevant factors include: (1) the relevance of the evidence; (2) the availability of other evidence; (3) the government’s role in the litigation; and (4) the extent to which disclosure would hinder frank and independent discussion regarding contemplated policies and decisions.”  There is a formal process for invoking privilege, which requires the government to “provide precise and certain reasons for preserving the confidentiality of designated material.”

In this case, Judge Pechman had previously determined that discrimination because of gender identity involves a “suspect classification” for purposes of equal protection requirements, which means the government has the burden of proving that there is a compelling justification for the discrimination. In this case, however, the government has articulated only a generalized judgment that service by transgender individuals is too “risky” based on no facts whatsoever.  Judge Pechman concluded in granting the plaintiffs’ discovery motion that “the deliberative process privilege does not apply in this case.”

The government had moved for a protective order “precluding discovery directed at President Trump.” While conceding that Trump has “not provided substantive responses or produced a privilege log” listing specifically what information has to be protected against disclosure, the government contended that “because the requested discovery raises ‘separation of powers concerns,’ Plaintiffs must exhaust discovery ‘from sources other than the President and his immediate White House advisors and staff’ before he is required to formally invoke the privilege.”

Judge Pechman noted that so far the government has refused to provide any information about how the policy decision was made or developed, and has failed to identify the specific documents and other information for which it claims privilege. In a footnote, she commented, “The Court notes that Defendants have steadfastly refused to identify even one general or military official President Trump consulted before announcing the ban.”  Thus, she found, there was no basis for the court to evaluate “whether the privilege applies and if so, whether Plaintiffs have established a showing of need sufficient to overcome it.”  Indeed, she concluded in a prior decision, as far as the record stands, it looks as if Trump made the whole thing up himself without relying on any military expertise. Thus, she has preliminarily rejected the government’s contention that the policy would enjoy the deference normally extended to military policies adopted based on the specialized training and expertise of the military policy makers.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s August 6 ruling focused on an issue that Judge Pechman had previously decided: whether the plaintiffs had standing to continue challenging the policy after Mattis’s memo supplanted the “withdrawn” earlier policy announcements. She had little trouble in determining that all the plaintiffs, even those who are currently-serving transgender personnel who would be allowed to consider serving under the “new” policy, still had standing, which requires a finding that implementing the policy would cause them harm.

“The Court rejects Defendants’ argument that Plaintiffs no longer have standing because they are not harmed by the Mattis Implementation Plan,” she wrote, stating that “the effect of that plan would be that individuals who require or have undergone gender transition would be absolutely disqualified from military service, individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria would be largely disqualified from military service, and, to the extent that there are any individuals who identify as ‘transgender’ but do not fall under the first two categories, they would be allowed to serve, but only ‘in their biological sex’ (which means that openly transgender persons would generally not be allowed to serve in conformance with their identity.)” Furthermore, those who have already transitioned and are now serving would be doing so under the stigma of having been labeled as “unfit” for military service and presenting an undue risk to military readiness, and would likely suffer prejudice in terms of their assignments and their treatment by fellow military personnel, as well as emotional harm.

“The Mattis Implementation Plan sends a blatantly stigmatizing message to all members of the military hierarchy that has a unique and damaging effect on a narrow and identifiable set of individuals, of which Plaintiffs are members,” she wrote. They would be serving “pursuant to an exception to a policy that explicitly marks them as unfit for service.  No other service members are so afflicted.  These Plaintiffs are denied equal treatment because they will be the only service members who are allowed to serve only based on a technicality; as an exception to a policy that generally paints them as unfit.”

She concluded that “because their stigmatic injury derives from this unequal treatment, it is sufficient to confer standing.” She pointed out that beyond stigmatization, the Implementation Plan “creates a substantial risk that Plaintiffs will suffer concrete harms to their careers in the near future.  There is a substantial risk that the plan will harm Plaintiffs’ career development in the form of reduced opportunities for assignments, promotion, training, and deployment.  These harms are an additional basis for Plaintiffs’ standing.”  She rejected the government’s contention that these harms were only “speculative.”

Furthermore, she rejected the claim that Trump’s “withdrawal” of his August 2017 memorandum and the substitution of the Mattis Implementation Plan made the existing lawsuits moot, agreeing with Judge Pechman that the “new” plan was merely a method of “implementing” the previously announced policy. She found that the Implementation Plan “prevents service by transgender individuals,” just as Trump had directed in August 2017, and the minor deviations from the complete categorical ban were not significant enough to make it substantially different.

Thus she refused to dissolve the preliminary injunction. She refrained from ruling on motions for summary judgment on the merits of the equal protection claim, because there are sharply contested facts in this case and no discovery has taken place, so it can’t be decided purely as a matter of law. The facts count here in court, even if they don’t seem to count in the White House or the Defense Department.

However, Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted the government’s motion to partially dissolve the injunction as it applies personally to Trump, and granted the motion to “dismiss the President himself as a party to this case. Throughout this lawsuit,” she wrote, “Plaintiffs ask this Court to enjoin a policy that represents an official, non-ministerial act of the President, and declare that policy unlawful.  Sound separation-of-power principles counsel the Court against granting these forms of relief against the President directly.”  Thus, she concluded, there was no reason to retain Trump as a defendant.  If the Plaintiffs prevail on the merits, an injunction aimed at the Defense Department’s leadership preventing the policy from taking effect will provide complete relief.

The Plaintiffs complained that removing Trump from the case as a defendant would undermine their attempt to discover the information necessary to make their case, since individuals who are parties to litigation are particularly susceptible to discovery requests. The judge wrote that “it would not be appropriate to retain the President as a party to this case simply because it will be more complicated to seek discovery from him if he is dismissed.  To the extent that there exists relevant and appropriate discovery related to the President, Plaintiffs will still be able to obtain that discovery despite the President not being a party to the case.”  And, she concluded, “Plaintiffs will be able to enforce their legal rights and obtain all relief sought in this case without the President as a party.”

The judge treated as moot the Defendants’ motion for a protective order shielding Trump from having to respond to discovery requests. “However,” she wrote, “the Court reiterates that dismissing the President as a party to this case does not mean that Plaintiffs are prevented from pursuing discovery related to the President.  The court understands that the parties dispute whether discovery related to the President which has been sought by Plaintiffs is precluded by the deliberative process or presidential communication privileges, and the Court makes no ruling on those disputes at this point. The Court will be issuing further opinions addressing other dispositive motions that have been filed in this case.  After all of those opinions have been issued, if necessary, the Court will give the parties further guidance on the resolution of the discovery requests in this case.”  In a footnote, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted Judge Pechman’s July 27 discovery order, and that defendants were appealing it to the 9th Circuit.  The judge emphasized that the preliminary injunction remains in effect for all of the remaining defendants in the case, so the policy may not be implemented while the case continues.

The possibility that Trump will be ordered to submit to questioning under oath in at least one of these cases remains a reality, but any attempt by the Plaintiffs to do so would undoubtedly arouse spirited opposition from the Defense Department, officially based on claims of privilege, but realistically due to the likelihood that Trump would perjure himself under such questioning. Recall the historical precedent:  The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Clinton based, in part, on the charge that he committed perjury during questioning before a grand jury by the Special Counsel investigating his affair with Monica Lewinski.  Thus, at least in that case, the House considered presidential perjury to be an impeachable offense.

Plaintiffs in the Seattle case, Karnoski v. Trump (in which the president remains a defendant), are represented by Lambda Legal and pro bono attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis. Plaintiffs in the D.C. case, Jane Doe 2 v. Trump, are represented by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), and pro bono attorneys from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP and Foley Hoag LLP.

Addendum:

On August 14, U.S. Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite, to whom Baltimore U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis had referred discovery matters in Stone v. Trump, another one of the pending cases, issued a ruling granting in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel discovery of deliberative materials regarding Trump’s July 2017 tweet, August 2017 memorandum, the “activities of the DoD’s so-called panel of experts and its working groups” who put together the memorandum ultimately submitted by Mattis to the President in February 2018, and deliberative materials regarding that Implementation Plan and the President’s March memorandum, “including any participation or interference in that process by anti-transgender activists and lobbyists.” However, noting that a motion is pending before Judge Garbis to dismiss Trump as a defendant in the case, Judge Copperthite declined to rule on the government’s request for a protective order that would shield Trump from having to respond to discovery requests directed to him, “pending the resolution of the motion to dismiss President Trump as a party.”  Cooperthite wrote that “no interrogatories or document requests will be directed to President Trump as a party, but may be directed to other parties pursuant to this Memorandum Opinion.  If the Motion to Dismiss is denied, the Court will revisit the issue of the protective order as to President Trump.”

Cooperthite faced a practical dilemma in dealing with the government’s requests to shield Trump from discovery. “On July 27, 2017, President Trump tweeted transgender persons would no longer be able to serve in the military and as for any deliberative process, simply stated this policy occurred after consulting with ‘my Generals and military experts.’  There is no evidence to support the concept that ‘my Generals and military experts’ would have the information Plaintiffs request.  There is no evidence provided to this Court that ‘my Generals and military experts’ are identified, in fact do exist, or that they would be included in document requests and interrogatories propounded to the Executive Branch, excluding the President.  By tweeting his decisions to the world, the President has, in fact narrowed the focus of Plaintiffs’ inquiries to the President himself.  The Presidential tweets put the President front and enter as the potential discriminating official.”  So there is a real question whether discovery that doesn’t include President Trump is at all meaningful, since the ultimate legal question in the litigation is the intent of the government in adopting the ban which is, at bottom, Trump’s intent.  On the other hand, discovery directed at President Trump raises serious questions about separation of powers and the traditional respect for the confidentiality of internal White House policy deliberations.

“So many factors are unknown at this juncture in the litigation,” wrote Copperthite. “It is unknown whether Plaintiffs can obtain the information necessary from the non-Presidential discovery to define the ‘intent’ of the government with respect to the transgender ban.  Defendants offer as an alternative, a stay of discovery with respect to the President, until the Motion to Dismiss the President as a party is decided.  If the President, as the discriminating official, tweeted his transgender ban sua sponte as alleged, this Court sees no alternative to obtaining the intent of the government other than denying the protective order with respect to President Trump.”  However, he wrote, precedents “instruct this Court to give deference to the executive branch because ‘occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible.’”  Thus, Copperthite decided to put off deciding the protective order issue until after Judge Garbis decides whether to dismiss Trump as a party, but for now will order the defendants only to comply with discovery requests directed to defendants other than Trump, Secretary Mattis and the Secretaries of the various military branches.

Justice Department’s New Request to Implement Transgender Policy Denied by Seattle District Court

Posted on: June 19th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

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 motion does not really make any arguments that Judge Pechman did not reject in her earlier opinions.  The new opinion in Karnoski v. Trump, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 100789 (W.D. Wash.), rejects the same arguments emphatically.

Last July, the President tweeted his declaration that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the U.S. military in any capacity, purporting to reverse a policy on transgender service adopted by the Obama Administration and in effect since July 1, 2016. A month later the White House issued a memorandum setting out the President’s new policy in greater detail, including an implementation date in March 2018 and a permanent postponement of the January 1, 2018, date that had been set by Defense Secretary James Mattis last June for allowing transgender individuals to apply to join the service.  Four lawsuits were filed by different groups of plaintiffs in District Courts in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Seattle, and Riverside (California), challenging the constitutionality of the policy.  All four federal district judges found that the plaintiffs were likely to win on the merits and issued preliminary injunctions intended to have national effect, forbidding implementation of the policy while the litigation proceeded.  None of the district judges were willing to stay their injunctions pending appeal, and the D.C. and 4th Circuit Courts of Appeals also rejected motions to stay, at which point the Justice Department temporarily desisted from further appeals.

Meantime, Trump had ordered Mattis to come up with a written plan for implementation of the August Memorandum, to be submitted to the White House in February. After Mattis submitted his proposal, which departed in some particulars from the August Trump Memorandum, Trump “withdrew” his Memorandum and tweets and authorized Mattis to adopt his plan.  The Justice Department then argued to Judge Pechman that her preliminary injunction should be lifted, because the policy at which it was directed was no longer on the table.

The judge concluded, however, in line with the plaintiff’s arguments, that the new policy was just a slightly modified version of the earlier policy, presenting the same constitutional flaws, so she refused to vacate her injunction. Instead, responding to motions for summary judgment, she ruled that the case should proceed to discovery and a potential hearing on contested fact issues.  The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal to the 9th Circuit on April 30, and filed a motion with Judge Pechman seeking an expedited ruling on the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment so that it could be appealed.  However, the judge declined to issue an expedited ruling, as discovery was supposed to take place and disputed facts might require a hearing to resolve.  Discovery has been delayed by the Justice Department’s insistence that much of the information the plaintiffs seek is covered by Executive Privilege, a dubious claim at best. The Justice Department has filed a motion with the 9th Circuit asking it to stay the preliminary injunction pending appeal, but as of June 15 the 9th Circuit had not responded to the motion.

Judge Pechman’s June 15 opinion said that “each of the arguments raised by Defendants already has been considered and rejected by the Court, and Defendants have done nothing to remedy the constitutional violations that supported entry of a preliminary injunction in the first instance.” She pointed out that she was no more persuaded now than she had been previously by the argument that Mattis’s Implementation Plan was a “new and different” policy.

The Justice Department also argued that “the Ninth Circuit and/or this Court ultimately are highly likely to conclude that significant deference is appropriate,” but Judge Pechman responded, “whether any deference is due remains unresolved.  Defendants bear the burden of providing a ‘genuine’ justification for the Ban.  To withstand judicial scrutiny, that justification must ‘describe actual state purposes, not rationalizations’ and must not be ‘hypothesized or invented post hoc in response to litigation.’”  To date,” she observed, “Defendants have steadfastly refused to put before the Court evidence of any justification that predates this litigation.”

She also pointed out that there are four nationwide preliminary injunctions in effect, not just hers. “As a practical matter,” she wrote, “Defendants face the challenge of convincing each of these courts to lift their injunctions before they may implement the Ban.”

The Justice Department also argued that failure to let the government implement the ban “will irreparably harm the government (and the public) by compelling the military to adhere to a policy it has concluded poses substantial risks.” But, Judge Pechman pointed out, at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Armed Services held after her injunction went into effect, both the Army Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, had testified that there were no problems with transgender people serving, as thousands are now doing.  Milley testified that he “monitors very closely” the situation and had received “precisely zer”’ reports of problems related to unit cohesion, discipline and morale.  Similarly, Admiral Richardson testified that he had received no negative reports, and that, in his experience, “it’s steady as she goes.”

The judge had already found that staying her injunction would likely cause irreparable injury to the plaintiffs, and that, in fact, “maintaining the injunction pending appeal advances the public’s interest in a strong national defense, as it allows skilled and qualified service members to continue to serve their country.”  She also rejected the Justice Department’s argument that her injunction should just apply to the nine individual transgender plaintiffs in the case, stating, “The Ban, like the Constitution, would apply nationwide.  Accordingly, a nationwide injunction is appropriate.”  And, she wrote, “The status quo shall remain ‘steady as she goes,’ and the preliminary injunction shall remain in full force and effect nationwide.”

The plaintiffs in the Karnoski case are represented by a small army of lawyers affiliated with Lambda Legal, Kirkland & Ellis (Chicago), Outserve-SLDN, and Seattle local counsel Newman & Du Wors LLP. The state of Washington, co-plaintiff in the case, is represented by attorneys from Kirkland & Ellis and the Washington Attorney General’s Office.  Fifteen states and the District of Columbia, the Constitutional Accountability Center, and Legal Voice (formerly known as the Northwest Women’s Law Center) are also participating in this case as amicus on behalf of the plaintiffs.

Trump Administration Issues New Transgender Military Policy, Attempting To Sidetrack Lawsuits

Posted on: March 26th, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

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 to “implement any appropriate policies concerning military service by transgender individuals.”  At the same time, Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys filed with the federal court in Seattle copies of Defense Secretary James Mattis’s Memorandum to the President and a Department of Defense (DOJ) working group’s “Report and Recommendations” that had been submitted to the White House on February 23, in which Mattis recommended a version of Trump’s transgender ban that would effectively preclude military service for many, perhaps most, transgender applicants and some of those already serving, although the number affected was not immediately clear.

 

Mattis’s recommendation drew a distinction between transgender status and the “medical condition” of gender dysphoria, as defined in the psychiatric diagnostic manual (DSM) generally cited as authoritative in litigation.  Mattis is willing to let transgender people enlist unless they have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which the Report characterizes, based heavily on subjective assertions rather than any evidence, as a condition presenting undue risks in a military environment.  Transgender people can enlist if they do not desire to transition and are willing to conform to all military requirements consistent with their biological sex as designated at birth.  Similarly, transgender people currently serving who have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria can serve on the same basis: that they comply with all requirements for service members of their biological sex.  However, people with a gender dysphoria diagnosis are largely excluded from enlistment or retention, with some individual exceptions, although those currently serving who were diagnosed after the Obama Administration lifted the transgender ban on June 30, 2016, are “exempted” from these exclusions and may serve while transitioning and after transitioning consistent with their gender identity.  (This is pragmatically justified by the investment the military has made in their training, and is conditioned on their meeting all military performance requirement for those in their desired gender presentation.)  Under the recommended policy, Defense Department transition-related health coverage will continue to be available for this “grandfathered” group, but for no others.

 

The March 23 document release took place just days before attorneys from Lambda Legal and the DOJ were scheduled to appear on March 27 in U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman’s Seattle federal courtroom to present arguments on Lambda’s motion for summary judgment in Karnoski v. Trump, one of the four pending legal challenges to the policy. Lambda’s motion, filed in January, was aimed at Trump’s July tweet and August Memorandum, although it anticipated that the Administration would attempt to come up with some sort of documents to fill the fatal gap identified by four federal district judges when they issued preliminary injunctions last fall: Trump’s unilateral actions were not based on any sort of “expert military judgment,” but rather on his short-term political need to win sufficient Republican votes in the House to pass a then-pending Defense Department spending measure.

 

Based on the obvious conclusion that Trump’s policy was not based on “expert military judgment,” the courts refused to accord it the usual deference that federal courts accord to military regulations and rules when they are challenged in court. Indeed, the only in-depth military study on the subject was that carried out over a period of years by the Obama Administration before it lifted the transgender service ban formally on June 30, 2016, while delaying implementation of new accession standards for transgender enlistees for a year. (Mattis later extended that deadline an additional six months to January 1, 2018.)  With no factual backup, Trump’s across-the-board ban was highly vulnerable to constitutional challenge in light of recent federal court rulings that gender identity discrimination is a form of sex discrimination.  Policies that discriminate because of sex are treated by courts as presumptively unconstitutional, putting the government to the burden of showing that they substantially advance an important government interest, and demanding “exceedingly persuasive” proof.  The “Report and Recommendations” filed in Judge Pechman’s court were clearly devised to attempt to fill that evidentiary gap, despite their disclaimer that the group assembled to study the issues and report their recommendations to Mattis and the President were tasked with an objective policy review.

 

The White House document dump ignited a host of questions. There was no clarity about when the “new” policies recommended by Mattis were intended to go into effect (their implementation would require rewriting and formal adoption in the form of regulations), and there were many questions about how transgender people currently serving would be affected.  Defense Department spokespersons said that the Pentagon would abide by federal law, which at present consists of the preliminary injunctions against the policies announced by Trump last summer, which were supposed to go into effect on March 23, 2018, if they had not been blocked by the courts.

 

Since the preliminary injunctions were all aimed at last summer’s tweets and August Memorandum, were they rendered moot by Trump’s revocation of those policy announcements? Or would the courts see the proposed new policy as essentially a continuation of what Trump had initiated, and thus covered by the preliminary injunctions?  The district judges had all denied requests by the government to stay these injunctions, and two courts of appeals had refused to stay those issued by the judges in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., leading DOJ to desist from seeking a stay of the Seattle and Riverside, California, injunctions.  Complying with those injunctions, the Pentagon allowed transgender people to begin applying to enlist in January, and announced that at least one transgender applicant had completed the enlistment process by February.  Arguably, the preliminary injunctions would apply to any policy of excluding transgender people from military service pending a final resolution of these cases, giving them a broad reading consistent with their analysis of the underlying issues.

 

In a signal of what was coming, DOJ attorneys stoutly combatted the plaintiffs’ demand in the Seattle case for disclosure of the identity of “generals and military experts” with whom Trump claimed in his July tweets to have consulted before announcing his categorical ban, arguing that after Mattis made his recommendation in February, DOJ would not be defending the policy announced in the summer but rather whatever new policy the President decided to announce, relying upon Mattis’ “expert military judgment” and whatever documentation was provided to support it. That led to a series of confrontations over the discovery demand, producing two written opinions by Judge Pechman ordering DOJ to come up with the requested information, and at last provoking a questionable claim of Executive Privilege protecting the identity of those consulted by Trump.  This waited to be resolved at the March 27 hearing as well.

 

The Administration’s strategic moves on March 23 appeared intended to change the field of battle in the pending lawsuits. When they were originally filed, they had a big fat target in Trump’s unilateral, unsupported actions.  By revoking his August Memorandum and “any other directive I may have made” (that is, the tweets from July), Trump sought to remove that target and replace it with a new, possibly more defensible one: a policy recommended and eventually adopted as “appropriate” by Mattis based on his “expert military judgment” in response to the recommendation of his study.  Clearly, the Administration was aiming to be able to rely on judicial deference to avoid having to defend the newly-announced policy on its constitutional merits.

 

The big lingering question is whether the courts will let them get away with this. The policy itself suffers from many of the same constitutional flaws as the one it replaces, but the “Report and Recommendations” – cobbled together in heavy reliance on the work of dedicated opponents to transgender military service – has at least the veneer and trappings of a serious policy review.  The plaintiffs in the existing lawsuit will now need to discredit it in the eyes of the courts, painting it as the litigation advocacy document that it obviously is.

 

Mark Joseph Stern, in a detailed dissection published in “Slate ” shortly after the document release, credited Administration sources with revealing that the process of producing the report had been taken over by Vice President Pence and Heritage Foundation personnel who have been producing articles opposing transgender rights in a variety of contexts. According to Stern’s report, Mattis was opposed to reinstating the transgender ban, but was overruled by the White House and is reacting as a soldier to the dictates of his Commander in Chief, unwilling to spend political capital on this issue.  Tellingly, the Report itself does not provide the names of any of those responsible for its actual composition, setting up a new discovery confrontation between the plaintiffs and DOJ.

 

Some are predicting that the new policy will never go into effect. If the courts refuse to be bamboozled by the façade of reasoned policy-making now presented by the Administration, those predictions may be correct.

Trump Administration Defies Court Disclosure Order on Eve of Previously Announced Trans Military Policy Implementation Date

Posted on: March 23rd, 2018 by Art Leonard No Comments

On August 25, 2017, President Donald J. Trump issued a Memorandum to the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, directing that effective March 23, 2018, transgender people would not be allowed to serve in the military. The Memorandum charged Defense Secretary James Mattis with the task of submitting an implementation plan to the White House by February 21.  Mattis submitted something in writing on February 23, but its contents have not been made public.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a statement late on March 22 with Judge Marsha J. Pechman of the U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, essentially refusing to comply with her Order issued on March 20 to reveal the identity of the “generals” and other “military experts” whom Trump purportedly consulted before his Twitter announcement last July 26 that transgender people would not be allowed to serve in any capacity in the armed forces. Karnoski v. Trump, Case 2:17-cv-01297-MJP (Defendants’ Response to the Court’s March 20, 2018, Order, filed March 22, 2018), responding to Karnoski v. Trump, 2018 US. Dist. LEXIS 45696 (W.D. Wash. March 20, 2018).

Judge Pechman is presiding over a lawsuit filed last fall by Lambda Legal and Outserve-SLDN challenging the policy. Pechman denied DOJ’s motion to dismiss that case and granted a motion by the plaintiffs for a preliminary injunction against the policy going into effect.  In order to grant the injunction, the judge had to conclude that it was likely the policy would be found to be unconstitutional and that an injunction pending the outcome of the case was necessary to protect the legitimate interests of people who would be adversely affected by the policy.  Karnoski v. Trump, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167232 (W.D. Wash. Oct. 10, 2017), motion to stay preliminary injunction denied, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167232, 2017 WL 6311305 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 11, 2017); 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 213420 (W.D. Wash. Dec. 29, 2017).

Then discovery in the case began, and DOJ refused in February to comply with the plaintiffs’ request for the identity of the “generals” and “experts” Trump claimed in his tweet to have consulted. DOJ argued that their defense in the case would not rely on any testimony or documentation from such individuals, since they would not be defending the August 25 policy announcement, but rather some new policy yet to be announced after Mattis submitted his recommendations.

Judge Pechman, ruling on a requested order to compel discovery filed by the plaintiffs, observed in an opinion issued on March 14 that “this case arises not out of any new or future policy that is in the process of being developed, but rather out of the current policy prohibiting military serve by openly transgender persons, announced on Twitter by President Trump on July 26, 2017, and formalized in an August 25, 2017 Presidential Memorandum.”  Karnoski v. Trump, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 43011 (W.D. Wash., March 14, 2018).

She continued, “Defendants cannot reasonably claim that there are no individuals likely to have discoverable information and no documents relevant to their claims and defenses regarding the current policy. President Trump’s own announcement states “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.”

Judge Pechman asked, “Which Generals and military experts were consulted? Which Service Chiefs and Secretaries provided counsel?  What information did they review or rely upon in formulating the current policy?  Were the court to credit Defendants’ Initial Disclosures and Amended Disclosures, the answer to these questions apparently would be ‘none.’”  The judge gave DOJ five days to comply.

DOJ responded by seeking “clarification” and raising the prospect that the president could invoke “executive privilege” to refuse to comply with the discovery request, in order to protect the confidentiality of presidential deliberations.

Responding to this argument early on March 20, Pechman issued a new opinion, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45696. She wrote, “The Court cannot rule on a ‘potential’ privilege, particularly where the allegedly privileged information is unidentified,” and pointed out that DOJ had not invoked executive privilege in its earlier incomplete responses to the plaintiffs’ discovery requests, or in any of their prior motions to the court.  She pointed out that under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, “in order to assert privilege, a party must ‘expressly make the claim’ and ‘describe the nature of the documents, communications, or tangible things not produced or disclosed – and do so in a manner that, without revealing information itself privileged or protected, will enable other parties to assess the claim.”

Furthermore, she noted, “While Defendants claim they do not intend to rely on information concerning President Trump’s deliberative process, their claim is belied by their ongoing defense of the current policy as one involving ‘the complex, subtle, and professional decisions as to the composition . . . of a military force . . .’ to which ‘considerable deference’ is owed.” Of course, claiming that the court should “defer” to “professional decisions” requires showing that this policy was adopted as a result of “professional decisions” and not based solely on the President’s political concerns.

The refusal to disclose what advice the president relied upon in announcing this policy leads to the inevitable conclusion either that such consultations did not take place, as Judge Pechman intimated on March 14, or if they did the president was likely acting against the advice of his generals and military experts.  Anybody reasonably informed on trends in the federal courts would have concluded by last summer that a revived ban on transgender service would be seriously vulnerable to constitutional challenge, and military commanders with a full year of experience in having openly transgender personnel would know that the policy implemented by the Obama Administration effective the beginning of July 2016 had not led to any problems with good order, morale, or substantial health care costs.

Judge Pechman gave DOJ until 5 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on March 22 to comply with her discovery order. DOJ submitted its statement refusing to do so shortly before that deadline, once again arguing that because they did not intend to defend last summer’s policy pronouncements, they were standing on their position that they were not required to make any of the disclosures in dispute since they would not be calling any witnesses, documents or studies for the purpose of defending those policies.

As this is being written on March 23, there has been no indication by the White House that an implementation policy or a revised version of last summer’s policy is being announced. This is not surprising, since three other federal district judges as well as Judge Pechman issued preliminary injunctions last year against implementation of the policy that was to go into effect on March 23, and two federal courts of appeals (the D.C. Circuit and the 4th Circuit) rejected petitions by the Justice Department to stay two of the preliminary injunctions.

In fact, in light of the injunctions the Defense Department notified its recruitment staff in December about the criteria for enlistment of transgender applicants that would go into effect on January 1, 2018, and that process did go into effect, with a subsequent announcement by the Defense Department that at least one transgender applicant, whose name was not disclosed, had completed the enlistment process, marking the first time that an openly transgender individual has been allowed to enlist.

In a slippery move, DOJ may be trying to render the existing preliminary injunctions and lawsuits irrelevant by arguing that the policy announced in the August 25 Memorandum has never gone into effect and that, pursuant to Mattis’s undisclosed recommendations, it never will.  Meanwhile, thousands of transgender military personnel find their employment status in a state of uncertainty, as do transgender reserve members or military service academy students working towards graduating and joining the active forces.

Perhaps some hint of what the new policy will be can be found in the Defense Department’s enlistment policies announced in December, which would preclude enlisting transgender individuals unless they are medically certified to have been “stable” with respect to their gender identity for at least 18 months, and thus unlikely to seek to transition while in military service, either because they have already completely transitioned from the gender identified at birth to their currently identified gender or presumably have foresworn any intent to transition while in the military.

This disclosure controversy relates back to the likely motivation behind Trump’s initial July tweet, which came shortly after the Houses of Representatives had rejected an amendment to a pending Defense spending bill that would have blocked any spending for “sex reassignment surgery” for military personnel. There were reports at the time that congressional sponsors of that amendment warned the President that he did not have sufficient Republican votes in the House to pass the bill in the absence of such a provision.  Trump’s apparent solution to his immediate political problem was to bar all transgender military service, which would remove the possibility of any serving member seeking to access the military health care budget to pay for their transition, since such a request would lead to their immediate discharge under the policy he announced.  In other words, DOJ is attempting to bury the fact that Trump probably lied in his Tweet when he intimated that this change of policy was the result of recommendations from generals and military experts, but their stonewalling leads to Judge Pechman’s obvious conclusion stated on March 14.

Ten Federal Judges Vote “No” on Trump Transgender Military Ban

Posted on: December 23rd, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

 

President Donald Trump’s July 26 tweet announcing that “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military,” as amplified by an August 25 Memorandum, has encountered unanimous resistance from ten federal judges who have had an opportunity to vote on it by Christmas. Nine of the ten were appointed by Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  One, U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis in Baltimore (District of Maryland), was appointed by George H. W. Bush.  As of December 22, the Trump policies had provoked four nationwide preliminary injunctions, and two federal circuit courts of appeals had refuse “emergency” motions by the government to stay the injunctions in connection with a January 1 date for allowing transgender individuals to enlist.

The most recent relevant opinions are Jane Doe 1 v. Trump, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 26477 (D.C. Cir., Dec. 22, 2017); Stockman v. Trump, Case No. EDCV 17-1799 JGB (KKx) (C.D. Cal., Dec. 22, 2017); Stone v. Trump, No. 17-2398 (4th Cir., Dec. 21, 2017); and Karnoski v. Trump, 2017 WL 6311305, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 167232 (W.D. Wash., Dec. 11, 2017).  All the major national LGBT groups are involved in at least one of these cases, and several of the nation’s major law firms are participating as cooperating attorneys.

Trump’s August 25 Memorandum set out three policies: a requirement that all transgender personnel be discharged, a ban on allowing transgender individuals to enter the military, and a ban on use of Defense Department or Homeland Security Department funds to pay for sex reassignment procedures for military members. The Memorandum assigned the Defense Department the task of figuring out how to implement these policies, and to report back in writing to the president in February, and meanwhile nobody would be discharged or denied medical treatment.  But the Memorandum specified that the existing ban on enlistments would remain in effect indefinitely, contrary to a Defense Department announcement in June that it would be lifted on January 1, 2018.

The four lawsuits were filed in different federal district courts shortly after the policy was announced, with complaints alleging a violation of Equal Protection and a variety of other claims, but all seeking preliminary injunctions to stop the Trump policies from going into effect while the cases are litigated. They all specifically asked that the Pentagon adhere to the previously announced date of January 1, 2018, to lift the ban on transgender people enlisting.  The Justice Department moved to dismiss all four cases, and vigorously opposed the motions for preliminary injunctions, which if granted would block the policies announced in the President’s August 25 Memorandum from going into effect while the cases are being litigated and would requirement implementation of the January 1 date for allowing transgender people to enlist.

As of December 22, when U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal, sitting in Riverside (Central District of California), issued a nationwide preliminary injunction, all four district judges had issued such injunctions, beginning with D.C. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on October 30, Judge Garbis in Maryland on November 21, and Judge District Judge Marsha J. Pechman in Seattle (Western District of Washington) on December 11.  The subsequent opinions all cited to and quoted from Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion, none stating any disagreement with her analysis.  On December 21, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stay Judge Garbis’s injunction, and on December 22, the D.C. Circuit refused to stay Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s injunction.  As of December 22, DOJ had appealed Judge Pechman’s ruling to the 9th Circuit, and a similar appeal was likely to be filed from Judge Bernal’s ruling, but it appeared unlikely that an “emergency” stay of either of these preliminary injunctions would be ordered, or would necessarily have any effect, since the nationwide preliminary injunctions issued by Judges Garbis and Kollar-Kotelly are in effect… unless DOJ can find a U.S. Supreme Court Justice who is willing to issue a stay.

All four district judges rejected the Justice Department’s argument that the cases should be dismissed because no actions had actually yet been taken to implement Trump’s announced policies, which were being “studied” by the Defense Department under an “Interim Guidance” issued by Defense Secretary James Mattis in September. All four judges credited the plaintiffs’ arguments that the announcement of the policies and the instruction to the Defense Department to devise a method of implementation had already thrown into turmoil and uncertainty the lives of presently serving transgender individuals as well as transgender people who were anticipating signing up for military service beginning January 1, including transgender students in the nation’s military academies anticipating joining the active forces upon graduation, and they had also disrupted plans for sex reassignment surgery for several of the plaintiffs.  While Judge Kollar-Kotelly found that none of the plaintiffs in the case before her had individual standing to contest the surgery restriction, so she granted the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss that part of the complaint in the case before her, the three other judges all found that some of the plaintiffs in their cases were directly affected by the surgery ban and denied the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss that part of their cases.  Ultimately, all four cases are proceeding on an Equal Protection theory, with the judges finding that the plaintiffs had standing to bring these constitutional challenges, which were ripe for consideration on the merits.

As to the preliminary injunction motions, all four judges agreed that the high standards for enjoining the implementation of government policies were easily met in these cases. They all agreed that policies treating people adversely because of their gender identity should be reviewed by the same standard as policies that discriminate because of sex, which is called “intermediate scrutiny.”  Under this standard, the government bears the burden of showing that it has a justification for the policy that is “exceedingly persuasive,” “genuine,” “not hypothesized,” and “not invented post hoc in response to litigation,” and “must not rely on overbroad generalizations,” wrote Judge Bernal in his December 22 opinion, picking up quotes from prior cases.

“Defendants’ justifications do not pass muster,” Bernal wrote.  “Their reliance on cost is unavailing, as precedent shows the ease of cost and administration do not survive intermediate scrutiny even if it is significant.  Moreover, all the evidence in the record suggests the ban’s cost savings to the government is miniscule.  Furthermore, Defendants’ unsupported allegation that allowing transgender individuals to be in the military would adversely affect unit cohesion is similarly unsupported by the proffered evidence.  These justifications fall far short of exceedingly persuasive.”  Bernal concluded, as had the other three district judges, that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their Equal Protection claim, so it was unnecessary to analyze the other constitutional theories they offered.

He also rejected DOJ’s argument that the court should follow the normal practice of according “a highly deferential level of review” to executive branch decisions about military policy. Quoting a Supreme Court ruling from 1981, which such that such deferential review is most appropriate when the “military acts with measure, and not ‘unthinkingly or reflexively,’”  he observed, “Here, the only serious study and evaluation concerning the effect of transgender people in the armed forces led the military leaders to resoundingly conclude there was no justification for the ban.”  He agreed with Judge Kollar-Kotelly that “the reasons offered for categorically excluding transgender individuals were not supported and were in fact contradicted by the only military judgment available at the time.”

Bernal also easily concluded that blocking implementation of the policy and ending the enlistment ban on January 1 were necessary to prevent irreparable harm to the plaintiffs.  This was basically a determination that allowing the Trump policies to go into effect would cause injuries to transgender individuals that could not be completely remedied by monetary damages awarded after the fact.  The Justice Department argued that “separation from the military would not constitute irreparable harm because it is within the Court’s equitable powers to remedy the injury,” but Bernal countered, “These arguments fail to address the negative stigma the ban forces upon Plaintiffs,” including the “damaging public message that transgender people are not fit to serve in the military.  There is nothing any court can do to remedy a government-sent message that some citizens are not worthy of the military uniform simply because of their gender.  A few strokes of the legal quill may easily alter the law, but the stigma of being seen as less-than is not so easily erased.”  Furthermore, federal courts have frequently held that “deprivation of constitutional rights unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

As to the “balance of equities” and “public interest” factors that courts are supposed to weigh in deciding whether to enjoin government action, Bernal found that these weighed in favor of granting the injunction. Invoking “national defense” and “unit cohesion” were not persuasive in light of the extended study by the Defense Department that led to its decision in June 2016 to end the ban and to set in motion a change in recruitment polices to take place July 1, 2017 (which was extended by Secretary Mattis to January 1, 2018).

 

Judge Bernal quoted from Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion: “There is absolutely no support for the claim that the ongoing service of transgender people would have any negative effect on the military at all. In fact, there is considerable evidence that it is the discharge and banning of such individuals that would have such effects.”  Judge Bernal saw no reason to depart from the analysis by Judges Garbis and Kollar-Kotelly in their decisions to issue preliminary injunctions.

Judge Bernal issued a two-part order. The first part enjoins the defendants “from categorically excluding individuals … from military service on the basis that they are transgender.” The second part provides that “no current service member … may be separated, denied reenlistment, demoted, denied promotion, denied medically necessary treatment on a timely basis, or otherwise subjected to adverse treatment or differential terms of service on the basis that they are transgender.”

The Justice Department sought to have the preliminary injunctions stayed, but so far the district judges have not been receptive, so DOJ took the next step of filing appeals in the D.C., 4th and 9th Circuits, and, claiming an “emergency” as January 1 drew near, sought particularly to stay the part of the injunctions that would require lifting the enlistment ban as of that date.

On December 21, a 4th Circuit three-judge panel rejected the motion for stay without comment. The next day, however, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit issued an opinion explaining its refusal to grant the requested stay.  Wrote the D.C. panel, “Appellants have not shown a strong likelihood that they will succeed on the merits of their challenge to the district court’s order.  As the district court explained, ‘the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered by the [Memorandum], the unusual’ and abrupt ‘circumstances surround the President’s announcement of [the exclusion], the fact that the reasons given for [it] do not appear to be supported by any facts, and the recent rejection of those reasons by the military itself,’ taken together, ‘strongly suggest that Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment claim is meritorious.’”

The court noted in particular the adverse effect that staying the injunction would have on transgender individuals who have been attending the service academies and anticipating graduating and being accepted into the active service as officers. Indeed, the court suggested, federal law actually treats students in the service academies as members of the military, so letting the discharge policy go into effect posed an immediate threat to them.

In seeking “emergency” relief, DOJ contended that the Defense Department was not ready to being enlisting transgender people. In an order that Judge Kollar-Kotelly had issued on December 11, denying an emergency stay motion, she pointed out that DOJ was relying on “sweeping and conclusory statements” without “explaining what precisely needs to be completed by January 1, 2018, in order for Appellants to be prepared to begin transgender accessions.”

Totally undermining this emergency motion was the Defense Department’s own action. “With respect to implementation of transgender accession into the military,” wrote the D.C. panel, “Appellants did not even inform this court of a Defense Department memorandum issued December 8, 2017, that provides detailed directions and guidance governing ‘processing transgender applicants for military service,’ directions that the Secretary of Defense’s Department commanded ‘shall remain in effect until expressly revoked.’  That open-ended directive documenting concrete plans already in place to govern accession was issued before the district court ruled on the motion for a stay pending appeal.”  Thus, the government is tripping over itself in the urgency of DOJ to satisfy the President’s demand that his whims be obeyed.  And the court was totally unconvinced by DOJ’s argument that, in the absence of the preliminary injunction, Mattis had any discretion to alter the terms set out in Trump’s Memorandum.

The court noted that “the enjoined accession ban would directly impair and injure the ongoing educational and professional plans of transgender individuals and would deprive the military of skilled and talented troops,” so “allowing it to take effect would be counter to the public interest.”

“Finally,” wrote the court, “in the balancing of equities, it must be remembered that all Plaintiffs seek during this litigation is to serve their Nation with honor and dignity, volunteering to face extreme hardships, to endure lengthy deployments and separation from family and friends, and to willingly make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives if necessary to protect the Nation, the people of the United States, and the Constitution against all who would attack them.”

In addition to denying the stay, the D.C. panel set out an expedited calendar for addressing DOJ’s appeal of the District Court’s decision to issue the injunction, directing that oral argument be scheduled for January 27, 2018. Furthermore, apparently reacting to the maze of unfamiliar acronyms strewn through the papers filed with the court, making them difficult for the judges to process efficiently, “the parties are urged to limit the use of abbreviations, including acronyms.  While acronyms may be used for entities and statues with widely recognized initials, briefs should not contain acronyms that are not widely known.

Perhaps federal judges are too polite to say so, but the clear import of their opinions in this litigation is that President Trump lied in his original tweet when he said that his decision was made “after consultation with my Generals and military experts.” To date, neither the president nor anybody speaking for him has actually identified any “military experts” or “Generals” who were consulted before the president decided to take this action.  The Defense Department, confronted with the allegations in the complaints about the extended studies that preceded the June 2016 policy announcement by Secretary Carter, has not cited any studies to counter them.  Secretary Mattis, who was on vacation when the president issued his tweet, was informed that it was happening the night before, according to press reports, but is not said to have been consulted about whether this policy change should be made.  Thus, the reference in the court opinions to the lack of “facts” backing up this policy, and the unanimous agreement that the usual judicial deference to military expertise is inappropriate in these cases.

Two Federal Judges Deal Setbacks to Trump’s Transgender Military Ban

Posted on: December 11th, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

Federal district judges on opposite coasts dealt setbacks to President Donald J. Trump’s anti-transgender military policy on December 11.  U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District Court in Washington, D.C., rejected a motion by the Justice Department in Doe v. Trump to stay her preliminary injunction that requires the Defense Department to allow transgender people to apply to join the service beginning January 1, 2018.  And U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman refused to dismiss the complaint in Karnoski v. Trump, a lawsuit challenging the anti-transgender service ban, while granting the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction against implementation of the policy.  Also on December 11, U.S. District Judge Jesus G. Bernal in Los Angeles heard arguments in support of a motion for preliminary injunction in Stockman v. Trump, a fourth lawsuit challenging the ban.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s decision was predictable, given her October 30 ruling granting the preliminary injunction and a more recent ruling “clarifying,” at the request of the Justice Department, that she really intended to require the Defense Department to allow transgender individuals to begin enlisting on January 1.  The Justice Department incredibly claimed that this January 1 deadline created an emergency situation, but their argument was significantly undercut by reports last week that the Pentagon had, in response to the judge’s earlier Order, put into motion the steps necessary to comply.

In support of its motion for a stay, DOJ presented a “declaration” from Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy Lernes J. Hebert, who claimed that implementing the court’s order on January 1 would “impose extraordinary burdens on the Department and the military services” and that “notwithstanding the implementation efforts made to date, the Department still would not be adequately and properly prepared to begin processing transgender applicants for military service by January 1, 2018.”

The judge found this unconvincing, pointing out that DoD has had almost a year and a half to prepare for this eventuality, dating back to former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s June 2016 Directive pointing to a July 1, 2016, implementation date for allowing transgender people to enlist, which was extended for six months by Secretary James Mattis at the end of June 2017.  “Moreover,” she wrote, “the Court issued the preliminary injunction in this case approximately six weeks ago, and since then Defendants have been on notice that they would be required to implement the previously established policy of beginning to accept transgender individuals on January 1, 2018.  In other words, with only a brief hiatus, Defendants have had the opportunity to prepare for the accession of transgender individuals into the military for nearly one and a half years.”

In opposition to the motion, the plaintiffs had submitted a declaration by Dr. George Richard Brown, who has trained “approximately 250 medical personnel working in Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) throughout the military” in anticipation of implementing the accessions policy, and a declaration by former Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, Jr., who stated that “the Services had already completed almost all of the necessary preparation for lifting the accession ban” as long as a year ago.

As to the so-called emergency nature of this motion, Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote, “As a final point, the Court notes that Defendants’ portrayal of their situation as an emergency is belied by their litigation tactics. The Court issued its preliminary injunction requiring Defendants to comply with the January 1, 2018 deadline on October 30, 2017.  Defendants did not file an appeal of that decision until November 21, 2017, and did not file the current motion for a stay of that deadline until December 6, 2017, requesting a decision by noon today, December 11, 2017.  There is also no indication that Defendants have sought any sort of expedited review of their appeal, the first deadlines in which are not until January, 2018.  If complying with the military’s previously established January 1, 2018 deadline to begin accession was as unmanageable as Defendants now suggest, one would have expected Defendants to act with more alacrity.”

However, the judge’s denial of the stay may prove more symbolic than effective in terms of allowing transgender people to actually enlist, since she noted that the policy that will go into effect on January 1 presents significant barriers to enlistment on medical grounds.  The Pentagon is planning to require that transgender applicants show, generally speaking, that for at least 18 months prior to their applications they have been “stable” with regard to their gender identity.  Nobody can enlist, for example, if they have undergone gender confirmation surgery within the past 18 months, since the medical standard will require that they have been “stable” for at least 18 months after the last surgical treatment.  Similarly, anybody first diagnosed as having gender dysphoria within the previous 18 months cannot enlist, since they will have to have certified by a licensed medical provider that they have been “stable without clinically significant distress or impairment” for at least 18 months since their diagnosis.  And those under treatment, for example taking hormone therapy, will have to show they have been stable for at least 18 months since commencing therapy.  In addition, of course, applicants will have to meet all medical requirements applicable to everybody regardless of gender identity, and it is well-known that a substantial percentage of potential enlistees are disqualified on physical/medical grounds.

As to the government’s “extraordinary burden” argument, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted, “There is no evidence in the record that would suggest that the number of transgender individuals who might seek to accede on January 1, 2018, would be overwhelmingly large.  To the contrary, although the Court understands that there may be some dispute as to the amount of transgender individuals in the general population and in the military, the record thus far suggests that the number is fairly small.”

Plaintiffs in Doe v. Trump are represented by National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD.

The plaintiffs in Karnoski v. Trump, pending in the district court in Seattle, are represented by Lambda Legal and Outserve/SLDN.  They alleged four theories for challenging the policy: equal protection, substantive due process (deprivation of liberty), procedural due process, and freedom of speech.  Judge Pechman found that three out of these four theories were sufficiently supported by the complaint to deny the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case, although she granted the motion as to the procedural due process claim.  She efficiently disposed of various procedural objections to the lawsuit, finding that all of the plaintiffs have standing to proceed, including the organizational plaintiffs and the State of Washington, whose motion to intervene as a plaintiff had previously been granted, and that the dispute is ripe for judicial resolution because of the imminent implementation of Trump’s policy directives.

As had two district judges before her, Judge Pechman cut and pasted screen captures of the president’s July 26 tweet announcing the policy into her opinion, and used particularly cutting language to reject DOJ’s argument that the president’s policy decision was entitled to the kind of judicial deference usually accorded to military policy decisions. “Defendants rely on Rostker v. Goldberg (1981). In Rostker, the Supreme Court considered whether the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA), which compelled draft registration for men only, was unconstitutional.  Finding that the MSSA was enacted after extensive review of legislative testimony, floor debates, and committee reports, the Supreme Court held that Congress was entitled to deference when, in ‘exercising the congressional authority to raise and support armies and make rules for their governance,’ it does not act ‘unthinkingly’ or ‘reflexively and not for any considered reason.’  In contrast, the prohibition on military service by transgender individuals was announced by President Trump on Twitter, abruptly and without any evidence of considered reason or deliberation.  The policy is therefore not entitled to Rostker deference.  Because Defendants have failed to demonstrate that the policy prohibiting transgender individuals from serving openly is substantially related to important government interests, it does not survive intermediate scrutiny.”  In a footnote, the judge added, “For the same reasons, the policy is also unlikely to survive rational basis review.”

The court concluded that all the tests for preliminary injunctive relief established by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (Washington State is within the 9th Circuit) had easily been satisfied.  Her Order “enjoins Defendants and their officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys, and any other person or entity subject to their control or acting directly or indirectly in concert or participation with Defendants from taking any action relative to transgender individuals that is inconsistent with the status quo that existed prior to President Trump’s July 26, 2017 announcement.  This Preliminary Injunction shall take effect immediately and shall remain in effect pending resolution of this action on the merits or further order of this Court.”

Thus, Judge Pechman issued the third preliminary injunction against Trump’s anti-transgender policy, after those issued by Judge Kollar-Kotelly on October 30 and U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis in Stone v. Trump on November 21 in the District Court in Maryland. All three preliminary injunctions block the discharge of transgender service members while the case is pending and require the Pentagon to allow transgender people to begin enlisting on January 1.  The injunctions by Judge Garbis and Judge Pechman also block the administration from refusing to fund transition-related health care (including surgery).  In the face of this united front from the three judges, it seems likely that Judge Bernal will eventually issue a similar order, so attention will turn to the Courts of Appeals to which DOJ has appealed the first ruling and presumably will soon appeal the others.