The U.S. Supreme Court permits the government to implement President Donald Trump’s policy prohibiting transgender individuals from serving in the military, overturning a nationwide injunction from a federal judge who deemed the policy “likely unconstitutional.”

The highest court in the nation issued its decision in a one-page order on Tuesday, allowing the Trump administration to proceed with its transgender military policy after it was paused in March by U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — the court’s three liberal justices — all dissented, though they did not provide reasoning, nor did the other justices.

“The March 27, 2025 preliminary injunction entered by the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington is stayed pending the disposition of the appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and disposition of a petition for a writ of certiorari, if such a writ is timely sought,” the court’s order said.

“Should certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically,” the order added. “In the event certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the sending down of the judgment of this Court.”

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The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to step in on Thursday, May 1, while legal challenges to the new policy continue to unfold in the lower courts. It urged the justices to stay a nationwide injunction issued by Settle, a George W. Bush appointee, on March 27.

“Active-duty plaintiffs not only allege constitutional harms … It is a definitive loss of career in service to their country directly attributable to the likely unconstitutional Hegseth Policy and Military Ban,” Settle stated in his decision. He emphasized that the government’s “unrelenting reliance” on asking the court to defer to military judgment was “unjustified,” as it had produced no evidence to support the “new judgment” on transgender service reflected in the ban.

Settle’s order was upheld by a three-judge appellate panel last month in a tersely-worded single-sentence ruling that also provided no reasoning. In its 39-page emergency petition, DOJ Solicitor General D. John Sauer asserted that halting the ban on “individuals who have gender dysphoria” was effectively “usurping the Executive Branch’s authority to determine who may serve in the Nation’s armed forces.”

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The case is Shilling v. Trump and was filed by Cmdr. Emily Shilling, a decorated Navy pilot with over 60 combat missions and experience with high-risk work as a test pilot, on behalf of herself and six actively serving transgender service members.

Trump signed an executive order during his first week in office, stating that the armed forces had been “afflicted with radical gender ideology,” which had only been enacted to “appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service like physical and mental health, selflessness, and unit cohesion.” The order stated that a man’s “assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood” is not “consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

Plaintiffs in the Shilling case are represented by attorneys from the law firm of Perkins Coie, which has sued the administration after Trump issued an executive order aimed at kneecapping the firm’s work with the government. It is one of several orders the president has issued against law firms linked to those he perceives as political enemies.