Donald Trump asks Supreme Court to rule on transgender troop ban

President Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether he can bar transgender people from serving in the military – escalating a row which was expected to play out in a series of courts, over many months.

Mr Trump announced in a series of tweets in July 2017 that he wanted to ban transgender people from the armed forces, surprising military leaders and members of Congress.

In March of this year he made an official announcement.

The president said he was “doing the military a great favor” by “coming out and just saying it.”

Federal courts, however, have blocked the Trump administration from enacting the ban.

The Ninth Circuit court heard arguments in October, but is yet to rule, and a Washington DC appeals court is due to hear arguments next month.

On Friday, however, the government leap-frogged that and went straight to the Supreme Court.

Noel Francisco, the solicitor general, wrote in his letter to the Supreme Court that “the decisions imposing those injunctions are wrong, and they warrant this Court’s immediate review.”

He argued that, because of the injunctions, "the military has been forced to maintain that prior policy for nearly a year" despite a determination by James Mattis, the defence secretary, and a panel of experts that the "prior policy, adopted by (Defense Secretary Ash Carter), posed too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality."

It will not be known for a while whether the Supreme Court will take the case.

However, the justices do not typically take cases before federal appeals courts rule on them.