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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).

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.

Federal Judge Blocks Implementation of Trump’s Transgender Military Ban

Posted on: October 31st, 2017 by Art Leonard No Comments

In a blunt rebuke to President Donald Trump, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, discerning no factual basis for Trump’s July 26 tweet decreeing a ban on military service by transgender people or the August 25 Memorandum fleshing out the decreed policy, issued a preliminary injunction on October 30, the effect of which is “to revert to the status quo with regard to accession and retention that existed before the issuance of the Presidential Memorandum – that is, the retention and accession policies established in the June 30, 2016 Directive-type Memorandum as modified by Secretary of Defense James Mattis on June 30, 2017.” Doe v. Trump, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 178892, 2017 WL 4873042 (D.D.C., Oct. 30, 2017).

The practical effect of the preliminary injunction, which will stay in effect until the court issues a final ruling on the merits of the case (unless an appellate court reverses it in the meanwhile) is that the policy on transgender service announced on June 30, 2016, by former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter during the Obama Administration, will remain in effect and the President’s tweet and subsequent Memorandum purporting to revoke these policies, which the Administration planned to put into effect in February and March, are blocked for now. By incorporating reference to Secretary Mattis’s June 30, 2017, Directive, the judge’s order requires that the Defense Department allow transgender people to enlist beginning January 1, 2018.

Trump’s August 25 Memorandum had specified that the policy it announced would go into effect by no later than March 23, 2018, regarding the requirement to discharge all transgender personnel, and that the ban on enlistments would be permanent, at least until the President was persuaded that it should be lifted.

Key to the October 30 ruling was Kollar-Kotelly’s conclusion that at this stage the plaintiffs, represented by National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Advocates and Defenders, have adequately established that they are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that a ban on military service by transgender people violates their equal protection rights under the 5th Amendment, and that allowing the ban to go into effect while the case is pending would cause irreparable harm to them that could not be remedied later by monetary damages.

The judge concluded that a policy that explicitly discriminates against people because of their gender identity is subject to “heightened scrutiny” under the 5th Amendment, which means that it is presumed to be unconstitutional and the burden is placed on the government to show an “exceedingly persuasive” reason to justify it. “As a class,” she wrote, “transgender individuals have suffered, and continue to suffer, severe persecution and discrimination.  Despite this discrimination, the court is aware of no argument or evidence suggesting that being transgender in any way limits one’s ability to contribute to society.”

This was staking out new ground in the absence of a clear precedent by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit or the Supreme Court. Alternatively, she noted, other courts of appeals in the 6th and 11th Circuits have ruled that gender identity discrimination is really sex discrimination and should be evaluated by the same “heightened scrutiny” standard that courts use to evaluate sex discrimination claims against the government.  (A petition by the Kenosha, Wisconsin, school district is pending at the Supreme Court presenting the question whether gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination, in the context of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and bathroom access in public schools.)

As for the justifications advanced by the government for Trump’s ban, the judge wrote, “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.”

The judge also concluded that the public interest is served by blocking the ban, since harm to the military from allowing transgender service was non-existent while letting the ban go into effect would actually impose significant costs and readiness issues on the military, including the loss of a large investment in training of transgender people now serving and the cost of recruiting and training people to take their places.

A major part of Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s decision was devoted to refuting the Administration’s contention that she did not have jurisdiction to decide the case. She characterized their arguments as raising a “red herring,” at least in terms of the retention and accession portions of Trump’s Memorandum.  The government argued that because the August 25 Memorandum delayed implementation of the policy until next year, nobody had standing to challenge it yet, as none of the individual plaintiffs in the case has suffered tangible harm.  The judge accepted the plaintiffs’ argument that both intangible and tangible harm was imposed as soon as Trump declared his policy, stigmatizing transgender people as unworthy to serve, tarnishing their reputations, and creating uncertainty and emotional distress as to their future employment.  Furthermore, federal courts have long held that depriving a person of equal protection of the laws imposes an injury for purposes of constitutional standing to mount a legal challenge against a policy.

The issue that seems to have provoked Trump’s July 26 tweet was military payment for sex reassignment surgery. Several Republican House members, outraged by that chamber’s rejection of their proposed amendment to the Defense appropriations bill to bar any payment by the Department for such procedures, complained to the president and reportedly threatened to withhold their support for the must-pass appropriations bill if their demand was not met.  The simple-minded president apparently jumped to the obvious conclusion: barring all transgender people from the service would solve the problem while satisfying the anti-transgender biases of his political base.  In common with his other major policy proclamations by tweeting, this seemed to be impulsive, not vetted for legality or defensibility, and oblivious to the harm it would do to thousands of people.

The way in which Trump announced his decision contributed to the judge’s conclusions. The policy was announced without any factual basis, by contrast with the 2016 policy decision, which followed several years of study, a report by the RAND Corporation (a widely-respected non-partisan military policy think-tank), wide-ranging surveys and participation of numerous military officials.  The outcome of all this study was a well-documented conclusion that there was no good reason why transgender people should not be allowed to serve, explicitly rejecting the grounds raised by Trump in support of his decision.  The judge noted the irony of Trump’s methodology: first announce a ban, then a month later task Defense Department leaders with setting in motion a process to study the issue, and mandate that the policy go into effect several months later, with the study limited to recommending how to implement the ban.

Attorneys for the government argued, in effect, that the policy is still in development and that at present it is not clear what the final, implemented policy will be, including whether it would provide discretion to military leaders to decide whether to discharge individual transgender personnel or to allow particular individuals to enlist (such as, for example, highly qualified people who had already transitioned and thus would not be seeking such procedures while serving). Their arguments lacked all credibility, however, in light of the absolute ban proclaimed by Trump on July 26, and the directive to implement that ban contained in the August 25 Memorandum.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted the government’s motion to dismiss the part of the complaint relying on the theory of “estoppel” as opposed to their constitutional claim. She found that none of the plaintiffs had alleged facts that would support a claim that they had individually relied on the June 2016 policy announcement and its implementation in a way that would support the rarely-invoked doctrine that the government is precluded from changing a policy upon which people have relied.

Despite its length (76 pages), Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion left some ambiguity about the very issue that sparked Trump’s tweet – availability of sex reassignment surgery for transgender personnel while this case is pending. Trump cited the cost of providing such treatment as one of the reasons for his ban, but the judge noted that the actual costs were a trivial fraction of the Defense Department’s health care budget.

However, the judge granted the government’s motion to dismiss the part of the complaint that specifically challenged Trump’s August 25 Memorandum dealing with sex reassignment surgery, because she found that none of the individual plaintiffs in the case had standing to challenge it or to seek preliminary injunctive relief against it while the case is pending. Among other things, the August 25 Memorandum provided that such procedures could continue to be covered until the implementation date of the policy next year, and that transitions that were under way could progress to completion.  And the government represented to the court that those procedures would continue to be covered at least until final implementation of the policy.  The dismissal was “without prejudice,” which means that if additional plaintiffs with standing are added to the complaint, this part of the case could be revived.

On the other hand, attorneys for the plaintiffs, announcing that the ruling was a total victory for their clients, argued that the order to revert to the June 2016 policy while the case is pending necessarily included the part of that policy that allowed for coverage of sex reassignment by the Defense Department for serving personnel. This conclusion is plausible but not certain, because the conclusion of the judge’s opinion specifies that the preliminary injunction applies to “the retention and accession policies” established in June 2016 and doesn’t explicitly say anything about coverage of reassignment procedures.  Of course, if DoD balks at covering the procedures, the plaintiffs can go back to the judge for clarification.

Response to the opinion by the White House and the Justice Department was dismissive, suggesting that an appeal is likely. Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s opinion is not the last word, since similar motions for preliminary injunctions are on file in several other district courts around the country where other groups of plaintiffs have filed challenges to the ban.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s judicial career began when President Ronald Reagan appointed her to be a District of Columbia trial judge in 1984. President Bill Clinton appointed her to the U.S. District Court in 1997.  Although she became eligible to take senior status many years ago, she continues to serve as a full-time active member of the federal trial bench at age 74.  Her rulings in major cases exhibit an independent, non-partisan approach to deciding politically-charged cases, with no clear predispositions reflecting the presidents who appointed her.