Trump pushes Supreme Court to rule on transgender ban

The White House has formally asked the US Supreme Court to intervene and review lower court rulings that have blocked President Donald Trump's attempts to bar transgender people from serving in the military.

The Trump administration had given a federal appeals court until Friday to rule after it heard one of the cases last month.

Trump's second attempt at a ban on transgender people serving in the US armed forces specifically targets those who experience a condition called gender dysphoria. Trump has named Defense Secretary James Mattis as the architect of the ban.

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Undoing Obama

Critics have accused the Trump administration of attempting to discriminate against transgender people by establishing strict legal definitions of gender based on biological features.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, gender dysphoria "is not the same as gender nonconformity, which refers to behaviors not matching the gender norms or stereotypes of the gender assigned at birth."

Instead, "gender dysphoria involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify." The association opposes the ban.

Former President Barack Obama's administration loosened the definitions of gender, triggering a heated debate across the country. The Supreme Court is unlikely to review the cases before federal appeals courts have ruled on them.

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ls/cmk (Reuters, AP)