The government wants a quick decision on the transgender troops case | New policies

By JESSICA GRESKO and MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to make an unusually quick decision on the Pentagon's policy of restricting the military service of transgender people. This is the fourth time in recent months that the administration seeks to bypass the lower courts that have blocked some of its most controversial proposals and push the conservative majority court to weigh quickly on a divisive issue.

Earlier this month, the administration asked the High Court to speed up the treatment of the president's decision to terminate the delayed action program for child arrivals, which protects young people immigrants from deportation. Administration officials have also recently asked the High Court to intervene to stop a lawsuit in the context of a climate change lawsuit and a lawsuit related to the decision of the government administration. add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census.

The ninth appellate court of the American circuit, regularly criticized by President Donald Trump, is involved in three of the cases. Trump's recent salvo against "Judge Obama" against his asylum policy – not one of the problems currently facing the Supreme Court – prompted Chief Justice John Roberts respond for the first time to the president for nurturing the perception of a biased justice system.

Joshua Matz, publisher of the liberal blog Take Care, said that the timing of the Supreme Court's early intervention in litigation could not be worse for Roberts and the other judges who sought to dispel perceptions that the court is simply a political institution, especially since Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation. At a particularly sensitive time for the Supreme Court, the Trump administration "forces it to engage in a minefield that many judges would surely prefer to avoid," said Matz.

The Supreme Court almost always expects to be involved in a case until a court of first instance and a court of appeal have ruled it. Judges often wait for courts in different parts of the country to weigh and draw different conclusions on the same legal issue.

It is therefore rare for judges to intervene early, as the Trump administration urges them to do so. A famous past example is that of Nixon's administration in court trying to ban the publication of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of US involvement in the Vietnam War.

In the case of immigration, the administration told the High Court that it should intervene and decide the fate of the DACA before the decision of a court of appeal, because the policy could be in force until the middle of 2020 before the judges could otherwise decide. The court of appeal has since ruled, but the request of the administration that the court be seized of the case is upheld.

In the military case, the administration argued that the Supreme Court should intervene before the court of appeal decides because "the case" is of paramount importance to the public: the power of the US military to determine who can serve in the armed forces of the Nation ".

In a statement, Peter Renn, a lawyer at Lambda Legal, who launched one of the challenges to transgender military policy, called Trump 's administration action Friday. very unusual step "which is" extremely premature and inappropriate ".

The Pentagon had initially lifted the ban on transgender troops from serving openly in the military in 2016, under the administration of President Barack Obama. But the Trump administration has reconsidered this policy, with Trump having finally issued an order prohibiting most transgender troops from serving in the military, except in limited circumstances. Several lawsuits were filed as a result of the change in the administration's policy. The lower courts have all spoken out against the Trump administration.

Census and climate change cases are still ongoing in the lower courts. For now, the Supreme Court has refused to block the climate change case. In the census case, the court agreed to decide what type of evidence a trial judge could take into account and to postpone the questioning of the Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, indefinitely. But he rejected a request from the administration to delay the trial and allowed other depositions.

The court will hear the arguments in the census case in February. It is unclear when it will respond to other requests from the administration.

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