Thirty-three retired officers and national security officials are urging a federal appeals court to uphold an order blocking President Donald Trump's transgender military ban, The Hill reported on Wednesday.
"The President's actions here continue to reflect a sharp departure from decades of military practice across multiple administrations regarding considered policy-making on major questions of military readiness," they wrote in a brief filed on Tuesday, along with eight other friend-of-the-court briefs.
The officers and officials added that "excluding transgender individuals from patriotic service that they are trained and qualified to give based on group characteristics, rather than individual fitness to serve, undermines rather than promotes the national security interests of the United States."
Trump declared last June that he would ban transgender individuals from serving "in any capacity" in the U.S. military, a move which reversed the Obama administration's move to begin allowing transgender troops to serve openly in the armed forces.
A federal court blocked the ban from being implemented, even after the White House issued a memorandum in March with revised plans to disqualify transgender troops from serving in the military "except under limited circumstances."
One of the other briefs filed was by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which said that "the government is using the same rationalizations once weaponized against African Americans seeking to serve their country to justify banning transgender Americans from service."
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