Ryan Mecca | Supreme Court Revives Transgender Ban for Military Service

         Due to an extreme increase in federal district court injunctions, the Supreme Court decided to reenact the transgender ban that prevents any transgender person from serving in the military. The only exceptions to this law are those currently serving and those who will serve “in their biological sex”. Transgender people have been permitted to enlist in the military since January 2018 and there is no evidence that “their doing so harms military readiness, effectiveness, or lethality”, their brief said.
         This article is directed towards the citizens of America, in an effort to inform them of the recent changes in the law and hopefully spark change so that we can be more accepting of the transgender community by allowing them to serve for our country without objectifying them and denying their identities. The author, Adam Liptak, seems unsupportive of this law, considering the last point made is about the fact that transgender people were never causing a problem in our country’s military. This article is an excellent example of the unequality still very apparent in the U.S., as some believe that our country is relatively accepting of all people; while we are more tolerant than other countries, we can definitely improve and become more accepting.
         Transgender laws in the U.S. have loosened, similar to how the slaves were freed after the 13th amendment was passed, however, both African Americans and transgender people were/are forced to follow laws and practices that still limited their freedoms. In the past, this included black codes, which prevented African Americans from owning land and exercising other freedoms, sharecropping, which was practically a form of slavery, in which the laborers only received a small reward for their work, and the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan, a group that intimidated Americans in an effort to reduce African American voting.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/us/politics/transgender-ban-military-supreme-court.html