Trump asks Supreme Court to hear challenge on transgender military ban

The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up the president’s transgender military ban.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco filed a petition to Supreme Court justices Friday asking them to hear the issue currently being debated in three lower courts in order to have the case decided quicker, according to CNN.

{mosads}Francisco also argued that the injunctions issued by lower courts warrant review for harming the military.

Trump first announced on Twitter his intention to ban transgender people from serving in the military in July 2017. In March of this year he signed a memo written by Defense Secretary James Mattis that banned most transgender people from serving in the military “except under certain limited circumstances.”

However, the policy has been blocked by district courts around the country, including the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in August.

According to Francisco, because of the injunctions “the military has been forced to maintain that prior policy for nearly a year” despite a determination by Mattis and a panel of experts that the “prior policy, adopted by [Defense Secretary Ash Carter], posed too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”

Normally, the Supreme Court waits for cases to make their way through lower courts before taking them up.

Groups involved in the lower level court challenges against the transgender ban sounded off on Trump’s move to involve the Supreme Court on Friday.

“There is no urgency here and no reason for the Court to weigh in at this juncture,” said Jennifer Levi, LGBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders’ Transgender Rights Project Director.

“The injunctions preserve the status quo of the open service policy that was thoroughly vetted by the military itself and has been in place now for more than two years. This is simply one more attempt by a reckless Trump administration to push through a discriminatory policy. The policy flies in the face of military research and dozens of top military experts.”