The Trump administration on Monday appealed the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] order that denied [text, PDF] a request to delay the preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s transgender military ban, originally set to take effect January 1.

The appeal [text, PDF] follows US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s Monday ruling [JURIST report], which rejected [order, PDF] the government’s claims finding it had not met its burden in seeking a stay of the preliminary injunction. The government argued that the moving party will likely succeed on appeal, that it will suffer irreparable harm, that the other parties will not be substantially harmed, and that the public interest favors the stay. The court also rejected the government’s claim that the case presented an emergency situation.

On appeal, the government raises many of the same claims it did in the first motion. In resolving this issue, the government offers two options for the court:

First, it could rule that there is no basis for preventing Secretary Mattis from exercising his own discretion to defer adopting the Carter policy for a limited time while the military completes its study or implements the change, as he did in June 2017. Second, it could hold that the nationwide scope of the district court’s injunction is inappropriate when only two of the plaintiffs claim that the accession directive will affect them (eventually).

In total, the transgender military ban is being heard in three federal courts, all of which have granted preliminary injunctions and rejected the governments push-back. The Department of Defense and Department of Justice have said [NPR report] the government will comply with the preliminary injunctions.