The Trump administration has made a new emergency request of the U.S. Supreme Court seeking an immediate stay of a nationwide injunction blocking the ban on openly transgender military service members. Solicitor General John Sauer said the injunction, issued by a district court in Washington, usurps the authority of the president in determining who can serve in the nation's armed forces and runs counter to the high court's own decision in the first Trump administration to allow the ban to move forward. The Trump administration's policy on transgender soldiers would be a "de facto blanket prohibition" that seeks "to eradicate transgender service," 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Benjamin Settle, a George W. Bush nominee, wrote when issuing the preliminary injunction in the case, Trump v. Shilling, on March 27.

The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow President Trump to enforce his ban on transgender troops serving openly in the military. The emergency application asks the justices to lift a Seattle-based federal judge’s nationwide injunction blocking the policy. “The district court’s injunction cannot be squared with the substantial deference that the Department’s professional military judgments are owed,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the application. At minimum, Sauer told the high court it should limit the judge’s nationwide order so it only blocks enforcement of the policy against the eight transgender service members suing.

The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to let it enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to pause a lower court ruling on Friday that blocked the ban from taking effect. “In this case, the district court issued a universal injunction usurping the Executive Branch’s authority to determine who may serve in the Nation’s armed forces—despite this Court previously staying injunctions against a materially indistinguishable policy,” the administration’s application states. If the Supreme Court does not halt the lower court’s injunction, it will stay in place for “a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the Nation’s interests,” they argued.