Judge Orders Defense Dept To Say Where On The Doll The Trans Service Members Hurt Them

If the DOJ thought they were going to intimidate Judge Ana Reyes by asking to speak to her manager, they seem to have seriously miscalculated.

Last week, AG Pam Bondi’s chief of staff Chad Mizelle fired off a nastygram to Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan at the DC Circuit complaining that Judge Reyes was mean to the lawyers defending the Trump administration’s anti-trans policy. Apparently she tried to illustrate that singling out trans service members is arbitrarily stigmatizing by declaring that all lawyers who attended UVA Law School are untrustworthy and making a DOJ lawyer sit down for a minute.

“Such treatment undermines the dignity of counsel and the decorum of the courtroom,” huffed Mizelle, with no apparent irony.

This week, the Defense Department docketed its separation policy for trans service members. It’s as vile as expected, declaring that gender is binary and immutable and transgender members of the military detract from the “lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity” of the armed services. On the, umm, plus side, they’re not planning to demand reimbursement for tuition and signing bonuses for anyone who agrees to voluntary separation.

Judge Reyes, who affronted the DOJ lawyers by pointing out that sex is not binary, was not impressed.

Here’s her minute order of this morning in its entirety:

The Court is in receipt of the 63 February 26, 2025 memorandum with Additional Guidance on Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness. In light of it, the Court Orders Defendants to file on the public docket the following by 10:00 am March 1, 2025: 1. The total amount of Department of Defense (DoD) spending per year from 2015 to 2024, and the total overall for that time period. 2. The total amount of DoD spending per year from 2015 to 2024 on psychotherapy for all service members, and the total overall for that time period. 3. The total amount of DoD spending per year from 2015 to 2024 on surgical care for all service members, and the total overall for that time period. 4. The total amount of DoD spending per year from 2015 to 2024 on elective surgical care for all service members, and the total overall for that time period. 5. If publicly available links exist, links to the line-item budget for DoD spending for each year between 2015 and 2024. 6. Identification of any “mental health constraint,” other than gender dysphoria, that DoD has previously found to be inconsistent with “honesty, humility, and integrity.” 7. For each Plaintiff, whether implementation of the Action Memo would require him or her to be separated from the Armed Forces. 8. The most recent estimate made by the DoD of the number of transgender individuals currently serving in the Armed Forces. If Defendants do not have ready access to “spending” amounts, they can provide the budgeted amounts. If Defendants have any questions about this order, they should contact Chambers with Plaintiffs’ counsel today, February 27, 2025, to have them addressed.

Someday soon, the Supreme Court will barf out an opinion justifying this wanton bigotry. It will probably fall to Justice Gorsuch to explain how kicking out trans service members is totally different from firing people for being trans in the private sector — no conflict with Bostock here! But for today, Judge Reyes will not let the Trump administration simply present their lies about trans service as facts. They’ll have to pony up and admit that the vanishingly small number of trans people in the armed forces pose no burden to cohesion or military finance. Or maybe they’ll run to Chief Justice Roberts and ask him for a stay on their homework … again.

Talbott v. Trump [Docket via Court Listener]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.

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