The Trump administration is now claiming the upper hand in legal challenges to its prohibition on transgender Americans in the military thanks to the the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the travel ban against several predominantly Muslim nations.

The Supreme Court in June held that Trump's many negative comments about Muslims on the campaign trail were irrelevant to a judicial review of the policy, particularly because the third and final version of the ban was based on an intense national security review. Likewise, Trump's ban on transgender soldiers was issued in 2017 with little preparation, only to be withdrawn and replaced this year by a more carefully drafted version.

The Trump administration connected the two directives in a Monday filing in federal court in Seattle, where a national civil rights organization, Lambda Legal, sued on behalf of transgender soldiers who want to overturn the policy. A judge put the ban on hold during the litigation.