A judge spent much of an hourslong hearing on Wednesday lecturing Justice Department attorneys as she weighed whether to grant an injunction against President Donald Trump’s executive order on transgender service members.
Judge Ana Reyes peppered the attorneys with rhetorical questions, berated them for what she said was a gross lack of preparedness, and painstakingly reviewed studies with them about transgender people.
Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, made clear her skepticism with Trump’s order. But she occasionally also acknowledged the possibility that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth might have a final say over who is eligible to serve in the military. She said she knew that her rulings, regardless of whom they favored, would be appealed in a higher court.
“I have no doubt that I am not the last step on this strange journey,” Reyes said, adding, “I just have to do the best I can with the evidence in front of me.”
During his first week in office, Trump signed an order requiring service members to identify as their biological sex. The order banned anyone suffering from gender dysphoria from serving in the military.
A group of active-duty transgender military members sued the administration over the order. They asked Reyes, the first openly gay federal judge in Washington, to block it from taking effect, arguing it violates the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, discriminates against them, and will cost them their careers if the court does not intervene.
Hegseth issued a memorandum on Feb. 26 directing Pentagon leadership to carry out Trump’s order, and Reyes aggressively scrutinized it during the hearing, saying it cherry-picked studies about transgender people and left out inconvenient data. She did not make a decision by the end of the hearing and said she would issue one before Hegseth’s order takes effect at the end of March.
Reyes questioned Hegseth’s credibility at one point, saying former administrations had set different policies on transgender service members and that she placed more value on the opinion of a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Trump’s first administration.
“Should I defer to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had a stellar military career … or should I refer to Hegseth?” Reyes said, adding that he had been “secretary of defense for about 30 days” and had “no prior deployment.” She then added the exception of “an early military career … prior to his television career.” Hegseth, a former Fox News host, served in the Army National Guard for several years.
Reyes also grilled the DOJ attorneys over an X post Hegseth recently shared, which stated that he had implemented a wholesale ban on transgender military members, a remark that, if true, would further complicate the lawsuit for Trump. Reyes asked the DOJ attorneys if she should take Hegseth at his word, and the DOJ attorneys said no because “people” use “shorthand” on X.
“This isn’t people,” Reyes replied. “This isn’t my friend Jane on the street who I pass by. This is the secretary of defense. This is the guy who issued the policy.”
Reyes, known for her quirky and colorful demeanor, veered off subject repeatedly, invoking pop culture references like the “land of Beyonce,” Ted Lasso, and Star Trek and imparting college lessons on the DOJ attorneys about Newtonian physics and the philosopher John Rawls.
She at one point laid into the Justice Department attorneys for failing to provide her information on how many people were currently serving in the military versus how many people had gender dysphoria, calling the lack of information “stunning.”
“Not only do you not have the data, you have no access to get the data because the military does not track people by gender identity,” Reyes said, questioning how the government could possibly reach a conclusion about service members suffering from gender dysphoria without that statistic.
The judge was incredulous as she asked the Justice Department attorneys to clarify that the plaintiffs, whom she said the military had invested in training and who have presented no problems during their service, would have to be discharged because they have gender dysphoria or have “transitioned” to the opposite gender.
DOJ ACCUSES JUDGE OF ‘EGREGIOUS MISCONDUCT’ AFTER HEATED HEARING
“I’m just supposed to say, ‘You know what, OK!’” Reyes said. She noted at one point, “We haven’t even gotten to animus yet.”
The Justice Department took issue with Reyes after her last set of hearings in the case, accusing her of “egregious misconduct” in a complaint to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Her chambers did not reply to a request for comment about the complaint.
