The long-running battle began on July 22, 2017, soon after President Trump posted a series of tweets in the early morning hours announcing that he was overturning the Obama administration's 2016 decision that allowed transgender soldiers to serve openly in the U.S. military. A few weeks later, Trump issued a formal order directing the military to reinstate its former policy, mandating the discharge of openly transgender service members, prohibiting their enlistment and cutting off funding for certain health care specific to transgender service members. Lambda Legal, the Modern Military Association of America, Newman DuWors and Kirkland immediately filed suit and quickly won a preliminary injunction blocking the policy in December 2017.

The Kirkland team fought challenge after challenge in federal district and appeals courts, and in January 2019, the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the court agreed with the Trump administration’s request to temporarily stay the preliminary injunction, it importantly also ruled that the underlying legal challenges could continue in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit issued its ruling later that year stating that discrimination on the basis of transgender status constitutes sex-based discrimination. This meant the administration’s ban would have to survive the test of intermediate scrutiny — a major hurdle that most legal scholars categorized as insurmountable for the discriminatory ban. The Ninth Circuit remanded the case to the district court for further analysis.

During his first week in office in January 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order revoking the ban. While this effectively ended the courtroom battle over the ban’s legality, the Equal Access to Justice Act entitled the plaintiffs as the prevailing party at the preliminary injunction stage to recover their costs and fees. Kirkland negotiated a favorable settlement on behalf of the plaintiffs for costs and attorneys' fees for not only Kirkland's work, but also our co-counsel's work over the past four years – more than $551,000 – all of which was immediately donated to our partners on the case.

Learn more about Kirkland's commitment to pro bono work.

Defending Transgender Rights in the Military

Defending Transgender Rights in the Military