Supreme court allows Trump limit on transgender people in military to continue – live | US news

The supreme court’s decision to allow the Trump adminstration to continue to restrict transgender’s people military service is not the end of this saga.

The policy will be in effect as lower court challenges to the plan play out.

A summary of how the supreme court got here from the Associated Press:

Until a few years ago service members could be discharged from the military for being transgender. That changed under President Barack Obama. The military announced in 2016 that transgender individuals already serving in the military would be allowed to serve openly. And the military set July 1, 2017 as the date when transgender individuals would be allowed to enlist.

But after President Donald Trump took office, the administration delayed the enlistment date, saying the issue needed further study. While that study was ongoing, the president tweeted in late July 2017 that the government would not allow “Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” He later directed the military to return to its policy before the Obama administration changes.

Groups representing transgender individuals sued, and the Trump administration lost early rounds in those cases, with courts issuing nationwide injunctions barring the administration from altering course. The Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted those preliminary injunctions.

One more, but not final, bit of supreme court news: the justices did not take action on a case about Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), a program ended by the Trump administration that allows hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children to temporarily work and live in the US.

By not taking up the case, the justices can only hear arguments in their next supreme court term. So, about 700,000 people protected by Daca will be able to keep these protections for the next few months.

Trump has raised Daca as a bargaining chip in his negotiations for a border wall, but it remains unclear how the ongoing court cases about the program would impact Daca’s inclusion in his proposed border wall funding plan.

The supreme court has allowed a policy that bans most transgender people from serving the military to continue. Under the policy, hundreds of transgender people already in the military can continue their service, but transgender people could not join the military. The policy also allows people who serve “in their biological sex” to join the military.

The LGBTQ civil rights group, Lambda Legal, said the supreme court’s decision was “perplexing to say the least.”

The group is involved with one of the court challenges to the transgender military restrictions.

Lambda Legal counsel, Peter Renn, said in a statement:

For more than 30 months, transgender troops have been serving our country openly with valor and distinction, but now the rug has been ripped out from under them, once again. We will redouble our efforts to send this discriminatory ban to the trash heap of history where it belongs.

The Supreme Court has also announced it will hear its first case about the Second Amendment since 2010 this term.

The case is a challenge to a New York City law that prohibits people licensed to have guns in their homes from transporting the weapons outside the city.

The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to limit transgender people from serving in the military while the legality of such a plan continues to be debated in lower courts.

The court voted 5-4 in favor of issuing a stay on efforts to block a plan to restrict transgender people’s ability to serve in the military, meaning the plan can be implemented.

The dissenting justices were Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

An original Trump adminstration plan to completely block transgender people from serving from the military was blocked by a federal judge.

Good morning

Today, Congress is back in session after a holiday weekend. Lawmakers must first confront a government shutdown that has surpassed the one month mark. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers and their families have now gone without paychecks or work for 32 days – and there is no clear resolution in sight.

On Saturday, the president offered a new border wall proposal but it is strongly opposed by Democrats who argue Donald Trump must open the government before they can negotiate border wall funding.

Outside of negotiations between the White House and Congress, there are 651 days to go until the 2020 election and the Democratic party is already crowded with potential candidates. The group was joined by California senator Kamala Harris, who this weekend officially launched her presidential campaign.

After Monday’s federal holiday, this short working week will be packed with shutdown negotiations, further deliberations on the 2020 race and more on US relations with Moscow as the president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, provides changing statements about Trump’s dealings with Russian officials.