Judge: Military must allow transgender people to enlist as of Jan. 1

Washington, D.C., federal district court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled Monday, Nov. 27, that the U.S. government must allow transgender people to enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, the date set by President Barack Obama, according to NBC News.
Judge Kollar-Kotelly, who had already issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to bar trans men and women from serving openly in the military, said in her ruling this week that the government had offered no solid evidence as to why they felt the ban was necessary.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed last August by GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, on behald of five transgender servicemembers. They filed suit after Trump’s July tweetstorm declaring that he would reverse the Obama Administration’s historic decision to allow trans people to enlist and to serve openly.
Last week in Baltimore, in a separate lawsuit, federal Judge Marvin Garbis issued an injunction halting Trump’s ban. Judge Garbis said that the six plaintiffs in that case had clearly demonstrated the harmful impact of the ban and that a “capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders qualified to understand the ramifications of policy change.”