A federal judge paused a hearing on Donald Trump’s ban on transgender military service members on Wednesday, criticizing the Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers for not being prepared to defend the policy.
U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes expressed frustration when the DOJ lawyer admitted to not reading three key reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had cited in support of the ban. Politico’s legal reporter Kyle Cheney shared updates on the hearing, noting how Judge Reyes was shocked by the lawyer’s lack of preparation.
“Reyes now chewing out DOJ lawyer for not having read the three reports cited by Secretary Hegseth’s transgender ban policy — she says the policy ‘egregiously misquoted’ the reports and wants to get into that, and she can’t fathom that DOJ lawyer hasn’t read them,” Cheney wrote on X.
The Pentagon’s memo from February disqualified transgender individuals from serving in the military, stating that service members with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition surgeries would not be allowed to serve.
Judge Reyes pointed out that Hegseth’s policy had “egregiously misquoted” these reports. She was shocked that the DOJ lawyer hadn’t taken the time to review them. As a result, she called for a 30-minute break, asking the lawyer to review the reports and assess how they had been misquoted by Hegseth. Afterward, she asked the lawyer to explain whether they thought Hegseth’s interpretation was valid.
When the trial resumed, Judge Reyes highlighted that one of the reports Hegseth used to justify the ban actually reached the opposite conclusion. The study found that transgender service members were just as deployable and had fewer service interruptions than soldiers with depression, who are not automatically excluded from service.
Judge Reyes didn’t stop there. As she reviewed more of Hegseth’s cited findings, she discovered that “virtually every” one of them contradicted the support for his policy, according to Cheney.
She then questioned the DOJ lawyer, asking why she should trust Hegseth’s “cherrypicking” of information and misleading analysis.
In a memo filed in court on February 10, Hegseth had ordered the military to stop accepting recruits with a history of gender dysphoria and pause any medical procedures related to gender transition. The policy would not affect the estimated 9,000 to 14,000 transgender individuals already serving in the military.
Later that month, the Pentagon filed a complaint accusing Judge Reyes of misconduct and bias. The complaint also revealed an internal memo pushing the ban even further.
This policy followed Trump’s executive order, which reversed a Biden-era policy that allowed transgender people to serve openly in the military. The order argued that a “false” gender identity differing from one’s biological sex couldn’t meet the standards needed for military service.
