Editor’s note, May 6: The Supreme Court issued a brief order temporarily blocking a lower court’s decision, which had prevented President Donald Trump’s ban on trans military service from taking effect. This means that trans service members are likely to be forced out of military service very soon. All three of the Court’s Democrats, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented.

Almost immediately after he began his second term, President Donald Trump ordered the military to ban transgender people from serving in the US military. Under the Defense Department’s policy implementing this order, the military was supposed to start firing trans service members on March 26, although those firings were halted by a court order.

That court order, in a case known as United States v. Shilling, is now before the Supreme Court. The Trump administration’s primary argument — that it’s not banning trans military personnel, but merely banning service by people with gender dysphoria — is nonsensical, and the

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