A Baltimore federal judge on Tuesday declined [opinion, PDF] the Trump administration’s request to shield information it employed when deciding to ban transgender people from the US military.

The lawsuit [complaint, PDF], filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website], is on behalf of more than one dozen transgender people serving or who want to serve in the military.

The ACLU contents that the ban initiated by President Donald Trump violates the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and substantive due process by singling out transgender individuals for unequal and discriminatory treatment, basing its decisions on uninformed speculation, stereotypes, and moral objection.

US Magistrate Judge David Copperthite rejected the defendants’ argument that the “deliberative process privilege” justified shielding documents, ruling that whether the ban was for military purposes or for purely political and discriminatory purposes “is at the very heart of this litigation.”

The lawsuit is one of several challenging the ban that Trump announced on Twitter in July 2017. Despite the administration’s efforts, the military began accepting transgender recruits this year, even as the White House continued to litigate.