Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the US District Court for the District of Columbia [official website] on Monday issued an order [text, PDF] stating that the US Military must begin enlisting transgender individuals starting January 1, 2018. Monday’s order is a clarification of a October 30 preliminary injunction [JURIST report] issued at the governments request.

In June 2016, the Department of Defense (DOD) [official website] signaled a departure [JURIST report] from its long-established policies banning recruitment of openly transgender military personnel. Approximately a week later, a formal announcement [JURIST report] arrived from then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter [official profile] who introduced the government’s new policy to allow transgender individuals to serve openly in the military, effective immediately.

This approach was to be fully implemented in July of this year, but the government reversed course [JURIST report] under the Trump administration. The new policy not only indefinitely extended “a prohibition against transgender individuals entering the military” (the Accession Directive) but also required the military to authorize, by no later then March 23, 2018, the discharge of transgender service members (the Retention Directive).

The government sought clarification [motion, PDF] as to whether the October 30 injunction granted by the court “prohibit[s] the Secretary of Defense from exercising his discretion” to defer the recruitment date. The court said that it does and rejected the defendant’s argument that “the Court could not have enjoined the Secretary of Defense from exercising such discretion because Plaintiffs have not challenged the Secretary’s exercise of his independent authority to study whether the DTM 16-005 will impact military readiness and lethality.”

The court ordered that the status quo as far as the recruitment date is concerned must be maintained that “any action by any of the Defendants” to the contrary is enjoined.