Judges Have No Business Striking Down Commander-in-Chief’s Orders

This week, a U.S. District Court judge blocked President Trump’s ban on transgenders in the military, ruling that the plaintiffs in the case would likely prevail in their lawsuit against the administration. The judge’s ruling compels the Trump Pentagon to continue accepting transgender applicants until the injunction is lifted, and it may also compel the military to fund and facilitate hormonal therapy and even sex-change surgery using taxpayer money.

If this were a ruling bringing us back to a state of military rules that had been in place for decades, it would be one thing. One might conclude that President Trump had been hasty in his decision-making and that the plaintiffs had a right to be heard in court before any rash moves took place. However, as you know, this is not the case. Trump, with his order as commander-in-chief, was doing nothing more or less than restoring the state of affairs that had been in place for the entire history of the military until his predecessor got a bee in his bonnet in the last year of his presidency and decided to turn the U.S. Armed Forces into his own personal playground for social experimentation.

Even in that scenario, it’s unlikely that Trump would have made the order under normal circumstances. The president himself went out of his way to present his candidacy as uniquely pro-LGBT for a Republican nominee, and it’s doubtful that he would have made banning transgender soldiers a priority for his first year in office – especially since there wasn’t even any particular swell of support for the move from his party’s conservatives. No, he made this move because a sticking point over funding for transgender surgeries was threatening his military budget, so he gave the whole thing a King Solomon-style slice and washed his hands of the deal.

The debate over transgender soldiers is one that can be had, but it’s not an issue we need to get into today. No, the problem with this ruling is not that transgenders should or shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military, it’s that federal courts have no business interfering in the orders of the commander-in-chief unless there is considerable (and we mean CONSIDERABLE) reason to do so. There are no such reasons in this case, seeing as how the military has banned transgender service for decades and there’s no indication that we’ve been the worse for it.

No, this is – once again – a case of liberal activist judges using the Trump presidency as an excuse to ignore precedent, the Constitution, and their sworn oaths and to instead jump on the bandwagon of The Resistance for reasons that have nothing to do with the law. If Obama had the authority to lift the transgender ban, then it is only logical that Trump has the authority to reinstate it. If Obama did NOT have the authority to lift the ban, then the ban should be snapped back into place. Either way, these rulings make no sense and they should be struck down by the Supreme Court in due time.