LGBTQ Agenda: NCLR on how it’s taking the fight to Trump 100+ days in

A showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court between the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Trump administration was discussed at a virtual briefing marking the president’s 100th day in office. The case centers on President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from serving in the armed forces.

Shannon Minter, a trans man who is vice president of legal at the San Francisco-based nonprofit, said during the May 1 briefing that the transgender military servicemembers NCLR is representing in Talbot v. USA filed an amicus brief with the court earlier that day. (Trump’s official 100th day in office was April 29.)

The case was first filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging Trump’s January 27 executive order banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a lesbian appointed by former President Joe Biden, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the order from taking effect, deciding it is likely unconstitutional and that Trump’s order is “soaked with animus and dripping with pretext.”

As the case hasn’t been decided yet on the merits per se, “The government has now asked the Supreme Court to step in for an emergency stay [of Reyes’ ruling] to allow the ban to go into effect, so we filed our brief on behalf of all the servicemembers we represent in the U.S. Supreme Court earlier today,” Minter said. “We expect the court to issue its ruling very soon, and sure hope they do not undo the victories we have accomplished so far. I’m optimistic.”

The brief states, “If this Court grants Applicants’ request for extraordinary relief, thousands of transgender service members will face immediate discharge through administrative separation, a harsh process normally reserved for serious misconduct and failure to meet performance standards. … That outcome – the abrupt termination of service members who are meeting all military standards and serving honorably – would be unprecedented and un-American.”

Minter stated in a news release that it would be “a devastating and wholly un-American betrayal of dedicated troops.”

“This type of mass purge has never before happened in our nation’s history. It would cause an avalanche of irreparable harms that would stain the records of thousands of our nation’s heroes who have been deployed and served around the globe in critical missions,” Minter continued.

Open service by trans people in the military was first allowed in 2016 during Barack Obama’s last year as president, when he ended the ban on such service. Trump reversed this during his first term as president, announcing a ban via tweet in 2017, which went into effect in 2019. This was then reversed by Biden in 2021.

Days after being sworn in to his second term, Trump issued an executive order January 27 that stated, “It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity. This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

Minter said during the briefing that when deciding when to take the Trump administration to court, NCLR prioritized this matter, because of the “dangerous precedent” a successful ban on trans people in the military would represent.

“Those very same justifications would, you bet, be used to keep trans people out of civilian jobs,” Minter said. “The military is the nation’s largest employer.”

Trump has signed 143 executive orders since returning to power January 20 – a record for this point in a president’s term.

Minter said that of the “blizzard of executive orders issued by this administration the intent, of course, [is] to render us helpless to respond.”

Executive orders have the full force of law in an area where the U.S. Constitution has given the president authority, or where Congress has delegated him authority, Minter said.

“Every chance he gets, he issues an executive order about everything,” Minter said.

NCLR Executive Director Imani Rupert-Gordon, a Black queer woman, said during the briefing, “This is an attempt to overwhelm us, and in many cases it’s working.”

“That is exhausting – to know something is inherently unfair and it's happening anyway,” Rupert-Gordon said. “The very best thing we can do is for us to fight back in this moment, and for us to fight back is for us to be in the courts. … We can’t cede ground. We can’t just say … ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this.’ We have laws and a judicial system to keep them accountable.”

To that point, Minter continued, “I’m proud of NCLR. I’m proud to be able to share with you we filed not just the first challenge to an executive order targeting LGBTQ people – we filed the first three. We wasted no time.”

Other cases
NCLR filed Doe v. Bondi, also in the D.C. district court, challenging a federal Bureau of Prisons directive stemming from an Inauguration Day executive order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government” that would put the plaintiffs, trans women, at risk of being sent to a men’s prison facility. A February 18 order by Judge Royce C. Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the directive against the plaintiffs.

Amy Whelan, a staff attorney with NCLR, said, “For decades, NCLR has had success in getting courts to understand that sex is not just about biology. Because of those cases, there have been decisions issued over the years by federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court that recognize that if there is a law that protects someone from sex discrimination, that includes things like being sexually harassed at work, or a woman being fired for appearing too masculine, or someone being denied housing or medical care because they’re gay or transgender.”

Of course, the standing precedent in this matter is Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision applying the 1964 Civil Rights Act to gender identity and sexual orientation.

NCLR, GLAD Law, and Lowenstein Sandler LLP also filed Jones v. Bondi in the D.C. district court, on behalf of five trans women. This challenged not only an order to move trans women to men’s prisons, but also an order to deny them health care. The court issued a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction March 3.

Pam Mercado Garcia is NCLR’s Hogar (Home) Program Associate. She said during the briefing that things have changed drastically in the legal environment for her clientele in the past 100 days.

“We do direct services and we work primarily with asylum seekers,” she said, adding that the administration is pushing the boundaries of the ability of the president to shut down pathways for asylum seekers established by Congress.

Examples include “trying to remove citizenship from those who have been born in the United States, however this has been blocked by multiple court orders, thankfully,” said Garcia.

(Another Inauguration Day executive order attempted to redefine who is a natural born citizen of the U.S., which is defined in the Constitution itself. This order to end birthright citizenship is making its way through the courts, too. The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments May 15.)

“There’s an increase in [Immigration and Custom Enforcement] raids taking place all across the country, and the administration is allowing such raids to take place in churches, courts, and schools, which is something that didn’t happen before,” Garcia continued. “They’re allowing immigration judges to dismiss asylum cases without a hearing – this has happened to one of our clients. … There’s been fast deportations without proper hearings or due process.”

One of the most famous LGBTQ asylum seekers who was removed from the U.S. without due process is Andry Jose Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist from Venezuela, who was among those sent to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador, as the Bay Area Reporter previously reported.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s office of public affairs declined to comment.

LGBTQ Agenda is an online column that appears weekly. Got a tip on queer news? Contact John Ferrannini at [email protected]

Updated, 5/6/25: This article has been updated to indicate the DOJ declined to comment.