There has been much controversy about the “transgenders” in the military. President Trump in a recent and rare decision is working to bypass the lower courts and appeal the matter directly to the Supreme Court:
President Donald Trump’s administration, in a move to get around the circuit court, on Friday appealed directly to the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to the administration’s policy that bars transgender people from military service.
The move comes as the president has railed against the Ninth Circuit, which put on a hold on his asylum ban for illegal immigrants.
Several district courts have blocked the policy, including the Ninth Circuit, which heard arguments earlier this fall, and the DC Circuit, which will hear arguments in early December.
But, on Friday, the administration moved to bypass those courts and go straight to the top.
Solicitor General Noel Francisco of the Justice Department filed petitions asking Supreme Court justices to take up the issue in three separate cases that are still in lower courts, CNN reported.
Francisco argues that lower court rulings imposing nationwide injunctions are wrong and warrant immediate review by the high court.
The administration’s attempt to get the issue before the Supreme Court in their current term could mean a decision by June 2019 – if the justices agree to take up the matter.
The policy, which Trump announced on Twitter in July 2017, was later officially released by Secretary of Defense James Mattis.
It blocks individuals who suffer from a condition known as gender dysphoria from serving in the military with limited exceptions.
It does let individuals without the condition serve but only if they do so according to the sex they were assigned at birth.
Typically, the Supreme Court does not like to take up an issue before it has made its way through the lower courts.
The administration had made similar requests of the high court in the past and the Supreme Court has rebuffed those attempts, as it did in a challenge to the administration’s attempt to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for Dreamers, sending the matters back to the lower courts before it weighs in.
President Trump has been railing against the Ninth Court and got into an unprecedented battle with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on the role of the judiciary.
On Thanksgiving Day, he slammed the circuit court while on a call with U.S. troops based in Afghanistan.
‘We got a lot of bad decisions from the Ninth Circuit, which has become a big thorn in our side. We always lose, and then you lose again and again, and you hopefully win at the Supreme Court, which we have done,’ he said on a call with U.S. troops based in Afghanistan.
Trump also acknowledged his spat with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
‘I know that Chief Justice Roberts, John Roberts, has been speaking a little bit about it. And I think – I have a lot of respect for him. I like him and respect him, but I think we have to use some common sense. It’s Ninth Circuit, everybody knows it, it’s totally out of control. What they’re doing, what they’re saying, the opinions are very unfair to law enforcement. They’re very unfair to our military. And they’re very unfair, most importantly, to the people of our country,’ he said.
Trump had complained that a judge appointed by former President Barack Obama has ruled against his asylum ban, calling him an ‘Obama-judge.’
That earned a sharp rebuke from the chief justice.
Roberts, who is a Republican and was nominated to the Supreme Court by George W. Bush in 2005, said: ‘We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges.
‘What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.
‘The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.’
Trump hit back on Twitter afterwards, saying: ‘Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges’, and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.’ (source, source)
The 9th Circut Court in not good. They are well known to support all kinds of immoral and problematic causes and are known to abuse the law to fit their own particular form of socialism.
However, President Trump has also shown open disdain for the rule of law as illustrated by the “migrant caravan” situation and his attempts to overstep the boundaries of how own power, so much that Chief Justice Roberts publicly rebuked him for his actions.
The legality or not of Trump attempting to take his case directly to the Supreme Court and bypass the lower courts is only part of the issue, for the larger one is the principle.
The US government has three branches- Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. The three branches separate legal powers by distributing responsibilities so they work in harmony with each other while at the same time restricting the overreach of each branch into the others so to maintain a degree of balance and prevent one from consuming the others in the same way that a fail-safe device on a mechanical device functions to prevent negative consequences.
Within the court system, the reason for working one’s way through a series of courts is that it is part of the judicial process that helps to guard against passing arbitrary laws or ideas. While the US has many of such laws, the fact is that the process exists, it is there for this reason, and if something is passed through that is undesirable, there is the Supreme Court that the person can appeal to, but not after he has exhausted all other options. One does not take one’s case directly to the Supreme Court because that court is to be used for precedent-setting matters that apply to the whole country, not solving regional, local, or personal disputes.
But this is what Trump is doing. He does not like a particular policy, and he does not believe he will get the answer that he wants, so he is attempting to circumvent the process itself by going to the highest authority first.
Some people would say Trump is doing this because “He is a real man, not a cuck like Obama,” but the truth is that in pursuing such a course of actions and example, Trump is actively undermining the due process of law established to protect the common man against the ravages of a dictatorial government. Trump is not acting like a “real man,” but like an angry tyrant who cannot get what he wants and so he will threaten the very system he is supposed to represent and protect in the pursuit of his own goals.
This is also not to say that I support people who willingly mutilate their genitals in the military, or that it is good that a court might stop Trump’s proposition from continuing through. Rather, it is that Trump is not following the process established to protect the other laws and rights that form the American system of government, and that in so doing he is doing what people often accused Obama of but will not acknowledge when Trump does the same or worse.
Years ago, I remember people warning that Obama was going to suspend the elections.
However, given Trump’s behavior that shows an open disdain for the law and legal process itself, could it be that Trump will be the one to suspend elections?
At this point, many things are possible.