Carrboro, the small sister town of Chapel Hill NC, officially recognizes Transgender Day of Visibility. Carrboro’s welcomeness is well known, and elected the first openly gay mayor in the state back in 1995. The proclamation was read by Councilmember Catherine Fray, the first openly non binary person elected to office in NC.
*This is being reported by The Hill
Denmark is advising its transgender and nonbinary citizens to proceed with caution when traveling to the U.S., according to a new advisory.
An update made Thursday to the Danish foreign ministry’s webpage on travel to the U.S. recommends trans people contact the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen before visiting the country, which under the new Trump administration has enacted several policies targeting transgender rights.
The advisory does not explicitly mention President Trump or his administration but comes as the State Department suspended a policy allowing trans, nonbinary and intersex Americans to update the sex designations on their passports, causing confusion and concern among travelers over whether it is safe for them to fly. The department previously allowed U.S. passport holders to self-select their sex designations, including an “unspecified” gender marker denoted by the letter X.
Seven trans and nonbinary Americans are challenging the new policy, which stems from a Jan. 20 executive order declaring the U.S. recognizes only two sexes — male and female — in federal court.
“If your passport has the gender designation X or you have changed gender, it is recommended to contact the U.S. embassy prior to travel for guidance on how to proceed,” reads the advisory from the Danish foreign ministry.
The addition comes one week after Finland issued a similar advisory for transgender residents seeking visas to the U.S.
“If the gender listed on the applicant’s passport does not match the gender assigned at birth, the US authorities may deny the application for a travel permit or visa,” Finland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, citing Trump’s executive order. “Please check the entry requirements with the US authorities in advance.”
Other countries, including Germany and the United Kingdom, recently issued travel advisories to the U.S. after reports of citizens being detained at the border.
*This is reported by the Tallahassee Democrat.
LGBTQ rights advocates from across Florida walked the streets of Tallahassee and met at the steps of the Historic Capitol Thursday to protest legislation that they say would further roll back their rights.
Wearing blue shirts that said “Let Us Live,” protesters chanted, “This is what democracy looks like,” in fierce wind and rain.
“We need to start running for office,” said Jules Rayne, a community organizer for Equality Florida and Manatee County resident. “We need to be everywhere, in every school district, in every county commissioner’s seat, in every mayor’s office.”
After years of the Florida Legislature passing bills that target the transgender community, the Republican-led branch of government still isn’t letting up. There are multiple bills attempting to further prohibit state funding for diversity, equity and inclusion in K-12 schools, state agencies and higher education.
Hundreds of Floridians marched from Cascades Park to the Capitol Thursday morning for the “Let Us Live March” to protest these bills and hold a rally on the front Capitol steps with trans leaders, who said they weren’t letting up, either.
LGBTQ advocates highlighted a small win that happened earlier this week, when two anti-DEI bills, “Gender Identity Employment Practices” (SB 440) and “Prohibited Preferences in Government Contracting” (SB 1694) were postponed in their committee on Tuesday.
SB 440, sponsored by Sen. Stan McClain, R-Ocala, and called the “Freedom of Conscience in the Workplace Act,” would prohibit employers from being required to use certain pronouns or requiring them to use a pronoun that does not correspond to the employee’s or contractor’s sex. Critics are calling it the “Don’t Say Gay or Trans at Work” bill.
And SB 1694, sponsored by Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne Beach, would prohibit an awarding body from giving preference to a vendor on the basis of race or ethnicity.
More than 1,000 members of the public signed up to comment during the Senate Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability, which Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, R-Orlando, said attributed to the bills getting delayed. Smith said it’s evidence that “people power works.”
“All of this other stuff related to DEI is not solving any problems. It’s not improving anyone’s life, and it’s just honestly needlessly dividing us,” he said.
There are still other anti-DEI bills making their way through committees, however, including one that some say would push the controversy over book bans into overdrive and another that would potentially halt funds for efforts like domestic abuse shelters for women.
“Prohibitions and Limitations on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Requirements for Medical Institutions of Higher Education” (SB 1710) was passed through the same committee that temporarily postponed SB 440 and SB 1674. That measure, sponsored by Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-St. Petersburg, prohibits state agencies from expending certain funds for a DEI office or officer.
Another measure by McClain, the same sponsor as the so-called “Don’t Say Gay or Trans at Work” bill, would define the term “harmful to minors,” and further limit classroom materials. “Material that is Harmful to Minors,” (SB 1692), says: “The school board may not consider potential literary, artistic, political, or scientific value as a basis for retaining the material.” That bill passed through a Senate Criminal Justice Committee and is headed to the Committee on Education K-12.
If passed, work “by Shakespeare or other very well-known authors would be on the chopping block in our public schools, which brings us in the wrong direction all over again,” Smith said.
And most worrisome for Rayne, the Manatee County community organizer, is “Official Actions of Local Governments” (SB 420), which would prohibit counties and municipalities from funding, promoting or taking official action as it relates to DEI.
It would prohibit local governments from promoting or providing differential or preferential treatment or special benefits to a person or group based on that person’s or group’s race, color, sex, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Critics of the bill included some Republicans, who said the bill needed more work, especially with the word “differential” versus “preferential.”
“If we provide differential treatment to a person based on sex, that could create a problem with a program that was intended for abused women, which nobody would want to get rid of,” said Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples. “We really need to hone in on where you’re trying to go.”
The bill still passed along party lines, with all Republicans voting yes.
Rayne said she believes this bill, along with many of the other anti-DEI measures, are broadly written, poorly defined and don’t serve the diverse, unique population of Florida.
“It’s going to put Floridians’ lives at risk and further erase our culture,” she said. “These bills are not what people are talking about at their kitchen table.
“Culture wars are not what Floridians care about.”
*This is being reported by NBC.
A new anti-LGBTQ law banning Pride events and allowing authorities to use facial recognition software to identify those attending the festivities was passed in Hungary on Tuesday, leading to a large demonstration on the streets of Budapest.
Several thousand protesters chanting anti-government slogans gathered after the vote outside Hungary’s parliament. They later staged a blockade of the Margaret Bridge over the Danube, blocking traffic and disregarding police instructions to leave the area.
The move by Hungarian lawmakers is part of a crackdown on the country’s LGBTQ+ community by the nationalist-populist party of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.
The measure, which is reminiscent of similar restrictions against sexual minorities in Russia, was passed in a 136-27 vote. The law, supported by Orbán’s Fidesz party and their minority coalition partner the Christian Democrats, was pushed through parliament in an accelerated procedure after being submitted on Monday.
Opposing legislators led a vivid protest in the legislature involving rainbow-colored smoke bombs.
At the protest outside parliament, Evgeny Belyakov, a Russian citizen who immigrated to Hungary after facing repression in Russia, said the legislation went at the heart of people’s rights to peacefully assemble.
“It’s quite terrifying to be honest, because we had the same in Russia. It was building up step by step, and I feel like this is what is going on here,” he said. “I just only hope that there will be more resistance like this in Hungary, because in Russia we didn’t resist on time and now it’s too late.”
The bill amends Hungary’s law on assembly to make it an offense to hold or attend events that violate Hungary’s contentious “child protection” legislation, which prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors under 18.
Attending a prohibited event will carry fines up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546), which the state must forward to “child protection,” according to the text of the law. Authorities may use facial recognition tools to identify individuals attending a prohibited event.
In a statement on Monday after lawmakers first submitted the bill, Budapest Pride organizers said the aim of the law was to “scapegoat” the LGBTQ+ community in order to silence voices critical of Orbán’s government.
“This is not child protection, this is fascism,” wrote the organizers of the event, which attracts thousands each year and celebrates the history of the LGBTQ+ movement while asserting the equal rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
Following the law’s passage Tuesday, Budapest Pride spokesperson Jojó Majercsik told The Associated Press that despite Orbán’s yearslong effort to stigmatize LGBTQ+ people, the organization had received an outpouring of support since the Hungarian leader hinted in February that his government would take steps to ban the event.
“Many, many people have been mobilized,” Majercsik said. “It’s a new thing, compared to the attacks of the last years, that we’ve received many messages and comments from people saying, ‘Until now I haven’t gone to Pride, I didn’t care about it, but this year I’ll be there and I’ll bring my family.’”
The new legislation is the latest step against LGBTQ+ people taken by Orbán, whose government has passed other laws that rights groups and other European politicians have decried as repressive against sexual minorities.
In 2022, the European Union’s executive commission filed a case with the E.U.’s highest court against Hungary’s 2021 child protection law. The European Commission argued that the law “discriminates against people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”
Hungary’s “child protection” law — aside from banning the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality in content available to minors, including in television, films, advertisements and literature — also prohibits the mention of LGBTQ+ issues in school education programs, and forbids the public depiction of “gender deviating from sex at birth.”
Booksellers in Hungary have faced hefty fines for failing to wrap books that contain LGBTQ+ themes in closed packaging. Critics have argued Orbán’s campaign amounts to an attempt to cut LGBTQ+ visibility, and that by tying it to child protection, it falsely conflates homosexuality with pedophilia.
Hungary’s government argues that its policies are designed to protect children from “sexual propaganda.”
Hungary’s methods resemble tactics by Putin, who in December 2022 expanded Russia’s ban on “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” from minors to adults, effectively outlawing any public endorsement of LGBTQ+ activities.
Orbán, in power since 2010, faces an unprecedented challenge from a rising opposition party as Hungary’s economy struggles to emerge from an inflation and cost of living crisis and an election approaches in 2026.
Tamás Dombos, a project coordinator at Hungarian LGBTQ+ rights group Háttér Society, said that Orbán’s assault on minorities was a tactic to distract voters from more important issues facing the country. He said allowing the use of facial recognition software at prohibited demonstrations could be used against other protests the government chooses to deem unlawful.
“It’s a very common strategy of authoritarian governments not to talk about the real issues that people are affected by: the inflation, the economy, the terrible condition of education and health care,” Dombos said.
Orbán, he continued, “has been here with us for 15 years lying into people’s faces, letting the country rot basically, and then coming up with these hate campaigns.”
*This is being reported by LGBTQNation.
A bill introduced by Republican lawmakers in Arkansas aims to intimidate anyone who supports or affirms young people’s social transition.
Earlier this month, Arkansas state Rep. Mary Bentley (R) introduced H.B. 1668, the “Vulnerable Youth Protection Act,” and Republican state Sen. Alan Clark introduced the Senate version. As the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas and local advocacy group Intransitive note, the anti-trans bill does not actually criminalize anything. Arkansas law banning gender-affirming care for minors was already struck down by a federal judge in 2023.
Instead, H.B. 1668 “weaponizes civil enforcement by permitting lawsuits against any person who supports trans young people by providing or helping to receive gender-affirming care or by affirming young people in their transition,” according to the ACLU of Arkansas. Minors or their parents can sue for minimum damages of $10,000 and up to $10 million in punitive damages for certain forms of medical care. The bill also allows Arkansas parents to sue people or medical providers outside of the state who help Arkansas youth access gender-affirming care.
Sadly, in 2025, state laws aimed at preventing minors from receiving gender-affirming healthcare — which every major American medical association has long been endorsed as evidence-based, safe, and in some cases lifesaving for trans and gender-nonconforming youth — are nothing new. But Arkansas’s proposed law goes an alarming step further in targeting anyone who might support or affirm a young person’s social transition.
The bill defines social transitioning as “any act by which a minor adopts or espouses a gender identity that differs from the minor’s biological sex … including without limitation changes in clothing, pronouns, hairstyle, and name.”
As the ACLU of Arkansas notes, if enacted, H.B. 1668 could lead to frivolous lawsuits against “hairdressers who cut a trans teen’s hair, teachers who use a student’s chosen name, and nonprofits that offer support.” Such lawsuits, the organization says, would be unlikely to hold up in court, as the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech and free expression.
However, the law is clearly meant to chill support for trans and gender-nonconforming young people with the threat of costly lawsuits. Describing the bill as “state-mandated bullying,” the ACLU of Arkansas writes that “H.B. 1668 fosters a climate of fear, where doctors, teachers, and even parents risk financial ruin simply for supporting transgender youth. It is a blatant overreach of government power, attempting to control private decisions and to circumvent our constitutional rights, including free speech, religious exercise, due process, and equal protection.”
During a Tuesday, March 18, hearing before the Arkansas House Judiciary Committee, a representative from the state attorney general’s office expressed concern that, as written, H.B. 1668 could not be legally defended, citing the First Amendment’s free speech protections.
“Particularly as it comes to the conduct that other individuals are allowed to have towards minors that can be deemed to be aiding in their social transitioning — things like a haircut, even clothing, or even the use of pronouns,” he said, “That’s all speech. And so our concern there is that when you are criminalizing or, in this case, providing a civil cause of action for certain forms of speech, that has to pass a very, very high constitutional bar, and we have to be able to defend that in court. And we think of this bill as it currently is, we can’t do that.”
*This is being reported by Houston Public Media.
The state of Texas collected information on transgender residents who have changed the sex listed on their identification documents.
According to internal agency documents provided to The Texas Newsroom, employees with the Department of Public Safety recorded each time a driver requested to change the sex listed on their license. The employee scanned and saved the driver’s information, the records show, and sent it to an internal email account created for collecting these data.
At least 42 such attempts, including instances where people asked for guidance about state policies during calls or in-person appointments, have been reported in the last five months, the records show.
It’s unclear why the state is gathering this information, with whom it is sharing it and whether the effort is ongoing.
The data collection occurred as state officials and lawmakers continue to erode LGBTQ rights, bolstered by the Trump administration’s policy rejecting the existence of transgender people.
On Friday, Paxton said it is unlawful for transgender Texans to change the sex listed on their state IDs. In an opinion that does not hold the force of law, he added that any documents that have been updated must be changed back.
Paxton’s agency and the Department of Public Safety did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The Texas Newsroom spoke with one driver who was flagged by the agency. A transgender man who asked not to be named out of privacy concerns for himself and his child, he said he would not have asked the agency for help updating his license if he knew his information would be reported to the internal agency email account.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “I would not have emailed because now that’s further putting me and my business at risk. …It makes me uneasy.”
For years, transgender people in Texas could update their state IDs to match their gender identity by obtaining a court order and then submitting this document to the state agencies that issue driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
Last fall, the Department of Public Safety said it would no longer let Texans change the sex on their licenses unless it is to fix a clerical error. In announcing the policy change, agency officials also directed employees to record anytime such a change was requested and send the information to an internal email address with the subject line “Sex Change Court Order.”
A similar policy change was made soon after for changes to birth certificates.
At first, LGBTQ activists spammed the email address with subscriptions to gay pornography blogs and adult toy companies, copies of the “Bee Movie” script and personal pleas to leave transgender Texans alone.
But The Texas Newsroom has learned that after the outcry died down, the department continued to use the email for its original purpose — to collect information from drivers who tried to change the sex listed on their driver’s license.
According to more than 100 pages of records obtained through an open records request, driver’s license division employees reported dozens of cases of drivers attempting to change the sex on their licenses in the last six months.
How people were treated and what information was collected varied by location and who dealt with their file, the records showed.
Some employees allowed the drivers to change the name listed on their licenses, but rejected their requests to update their sex. Others were declined on both fronts. Some new residents presented out-of-state or federal documents that matched their gender identity but were still denied a matching Texas license.
The records showed that some state employees also reported people who called the department or walked into a driver’s license office with questions about how to make these changes — even if they did not file a formal request to change their ID.
The Texas Newsroom reached out to the agency, as well as state leaders including Paxton and Gov. Greg Abbott, about the data collection. None answered questions about how the information was being used or how long the effort would last.
This isn’t the first time that state officials have expressed interest in tracking transgender Texans. In 2022, Paxton asked the Department of Public Safety to send his office data about drivers who may be transgender, according to the Washington Post.
At the time, the department said it did not track this exact information and no records were provided to Paxton.
This year, state lawmakers have proposed dozens of bills to whittle away at the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Texans. One proposes jailing anyone whose sex on state documents does not match that assigned to them at birth.
Most of the drivers’ names were redacted from the records released to The Texas Newsroom.
The aforementioned driver was identified using other information in the documents. In an interview, he said he was not aware that the state was no longer allowing people to change the sex on their IDs when he reached out to the department for help updating his license in October.
He had already updated his passport to match his gender identity, he said, and then went to update his license. But an employee at a local driver’s license office said he needed to contact the state directly and provide more documentation, the driver told The Texas Newsroom.
That’s when he sent a copy of his passport to the Department of Public Safety, he said.
“Hello, I’ve attached my passport in case you need it,” he wrote in an email, which was included in the records released to The Texas Newsroom. “Thanks in advance for your help.”
His email was then forwarded to the special address collecting information about transgender drivers, the records showed.
The driver said the request to change his license was then rejected. He is relieved that he has a passport and social security card that do match this gender identity. In February, the Trump administration stopped allowing transgender people to change the sex on their federal document; the policy change is being challenged in court.
“I feel at peace, honestly, just because I was able to get it done. But that doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize or empathize with the people that were unable to get the change,” he said. “I should be OK to live a normal life without being bothered or harassed.”
*This is being reported by University Business.
The well-being of LGBTQ+ young people suffers not because of who they are but due to mistreatment and stigmatization, a leading suicide-prevention organization contends.
The Trevor Project has released a state-by-state analysis of the mental health of LGBTQ+ teens and young adults. The survey of 18,000 LGBTQ+ young people ages 13 to 24 examines suicide risk, access to care, discrimination, bullying and the impact of anti-LGBTQ+ policies, among other factors.
The Trump administration has impacted support and awareness for LGBTQ+ students across colleges and universities. A recent Dear Colleague letter has demanded institutions to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which usually house support for LGBTQ students. GOP lawmakers across Florida, Texas and Iowa have also targeted academic programs related to gender studies.
Young people made the following statements about where they live:
I live in a community that is accepting of LGBTQ+ young people.
I or my family have considered leaving for another state because of LGBTQ-related topics politics and laws.
Percentage of LGBTQ+ youth who have seriously considered suicide in the past year:
LGBTQ+ young people were physically threatened or harmed:
LGBTQ+ youth who reported experiencing symptoms of depression:
LGBTQ+ young people who wanted and received mental health care:
*This is being reported by the Dallas Voice.
Friday was the bill filing deadline for Texas’ 2025 legislative session, and Equality Texas’ Interim Executive Director Brad Pritchett today issued a fundraising message warning the state’s LGBTQ community that “we have reached a grim milestone:”
As of Monday, March 15, 205 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills have been filed in the Texas legislature, Pritchett noted. That is, he said, the highest number ever recorded in Texas, surpassing the previous record of 141 bills filed in 2023.
“This is a distinction no Texan should be proud of,” Pritchett wrote. “These bills target our community’s basic rights and freedoms, from healthcare access to education to simply being able to live our lives with dignity. They aim to marginalize LGBTQIA+ Texans and erase our existence from public life.”
Pritchett pointed to Equality Texas’ efforts so far in 2025 which include hosting 30 advocacy training sessions across the state and training more than 1,000 advocates to mobilize at the Capitol, launching the largest pro-transgender TV ad campaign in Texas history, conducting more than 30 issue briefings on LGBTQ rights with legislators and stakeholders and organizing the “largest LGBTQIA+ advocacy day in Texas history.”
Pritchett said that while Equality Texas knows such strategies work, “we need your support to implement them, effectively … . The sheer volume of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation means we must redouble our efforts.”
*This is being reported by The Columbus Dispatch.
Ohio’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors is unconstitutional and should be tossed out, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The three-judge panel on the Tenth District Court of Appeals overturned a decision by a Franklin County judge that allowed the law to take effect last year. The GOP-controlled Legislature voted in early 2024 to override Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of House Bill 68, but advocates quickly sued on behalf of two transgender girls and their families.
“It is difficult to understand why our legislature believes adults are equipped to make decisions about gender-affirming medical care for themselves but not for their minor children,” Judge Carly Edelstein wrote in the decision.
House Bill 68 prevents doctors from prescribing hormones, puberty blockers or gender reassignment surgery before patients turn 18. It also bans transgender girls and women from playing on female school sports teams, although the lawsuit didn’t target that piece of it.
The law allows Ohioans younger than 18 who already receive hormones or puberty blockers to continue, as long as doctors determine stopping the prescription would cause harm. It does not ban talk therapy, but mental health providers must get permission from at least one parent or guardian to diagnose and treat gender dysphoria.
The American Civil Liberties Union argued the law violates the right of transgender Ohioans to choose their health care under the Ohio Constitution.
“The state’s ban is discriminatory, baseless and a danger to the well-being of the same Ohioan youth lawmakers claim to want to protect,” said Harper Seldin, an attorney for the ACLU. “It’s also part of a sweeping effort to drive trans people out of public life altogether by controlling our health care, our families and our lives.”
Republican Attorney General Dave Yost, who is running for governor in 2026, pledged to appeal the decision.
*This is being reported by The Hill.
A federal judge on Tuesday indefinitely blocked implementation of President Trump’s executive order effectively barring transgender people from serving openly in the military, a stark blow to the administration’s efforts to curb transgender rights.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, an appointee of former President Biden, barred Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other military officials from implementing Trump’s order or otherwise putting new policy into place effectuating it. She also said the plaintiffs’ military statuses must remain unchanged until further order of the court.
The judge said her order intends to “maintain the status quo” of military policy regarding transgender service that existed before Trump signed the order titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.” She stayed her order until Friday to give the administration time to appeal.
“The Court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals,” Reyes wrote in her opinion. “In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes.”
Six active service members and two individuals seeking to enlist in the military sued the Trump administration soon after the Jan. 27 order was signed, asserting it violates their constitutional rights. Two similar lawsuits are moving through the courts.
Trump’s order suggests that transgender people cannot “satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” because they threaten the lethality of the armed forces and undermine unit cohesion, an argument long used to keep marginalized communities from serving.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the executive order states.
Reyes wrote in her opinion that the president has both the power and obligation to ensure military readiness but noted that leaders of the armed forces have long used that justification to “deny marginalized persons the privilege of serving.”
“‘[Fill in the blank] is not fully capable and will hinder combat effectiveness; [fill in the blank] will disrupt unit cohesion and so diminish military effectiveness; allowing [fill in the blank] to serve will undermine training, make it impossible to recruit successfully, and disrupt military order,’” Reyes wrote.
“First minorities, then women in combat, then gays filled in that blank,” she continued. “Today, however, our military is stronger and our Nation is safer for the millions of such blanks (and all other persons) who serve.”
A 2016 RAND Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon found that allowing trans individuals to serve in the military had no negative impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.
During several hearings across multiple weeks, Reyes tore into Justice Department lawyers over Trump’s order and Hegseth’s policy effectuating it, which was set to go into effect on March 26.
A Department of Defense memo dated Feb. 26 said individuals with a “current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria” are not fit for military service. It added that the Pentagon recognizes only two sexes, male and female, in compliance with another Trump executive order, and requires service members to “only serve in accordance with their sex.”
Reyes noted that symptoms of gender dysphoria could “mean anything,” from “cross-dressing” to mental health conditions like depression, which are also common among members of the military who do not identify as transgender.
“How can I say that a policy is limited, when on its own terms, it could include almost any transgender person?” the judge asked Justice Department lawyers during a March 13 hearing.
Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyer Jason Manion argued that judges must accede to the “current” military, not those under the leadership of past administrations.
“You defer to the military,” he said. “You do not reassess the evidence they are doing.”
Nonetheless, the judge questioned the Defense Department’s use of “cherry-picked” studies to back up its new policy, which she said were “totally, grossly” misrepresented by Hegseth.
In her ruling Tuesday, Reyes pointed to that lack of evidence as reason to take a different course.
“Yes, the Court must defer,” the judge wrote. “But not blindly.”
At an earlier hearing last month before Hegseth’s policy was announced, Reyes sparred with DOJ lawyer Jason Lynch over the breadth of Trump’s order, suggesting it amounted to “unadulterated animus” backed up by little evidence.
She directed Lynch to sit down and purported she would ban all graduates of the University of Virginia School of Law — his alma mater — from appearing before her because they’re “liars” and “lack integrity,” terms mimicking Trump’s executive order.
“Is that animus?” she asked, calling Lynch back to the podium.
Following that hearing, the Justice Department filed a complaint against Reyes accusing her of misconduct. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, claimed the judge sought to “embarrass” Lynch with her hypothetical scenario.
Another seven transgender service members, backed by two LGBTQ civil rights organizations, are challenging Trump’s order on transgender troops in a separate lawsuit filed earlier this month in Washington state. Two more active-duty members challenged the order in a suit filed Monday in New Jersey.
In a statement, Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, one of the groups representing the plaintiffs at the center of Reyes’s ruling, said Tuesday’s decision “speaks volumes.”
“The Court’s unambiguous factual findings lay bare how this ban specifically targets and undermines our courageous service members who have committed themselves to defending our nation. Given the Court’s clear-eyed assessment, we are confident this ruling will stand strong on appeal,” Levi said.
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