(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s administration again urged a judge in Washington to lift the last nationwide injunction against a ban on transgender Americans serving in the military -- the only remaining obstacle to the new policy taking effect.
The U.S. Supreme Court lifted in January a pair of national injunctions in two related lawsuits. A judge in a third case lifted his injunction after the high court’s ruling. But U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said this week that the government can’t implement the policy as planned until an appeal is resolved in a dispute that arose in her case before the Supreme Court ruled.
The U.S. on Wednesday said the dispute cited by the judge is moot, and that her injunction is the only thing blocking the Pentagon’s ban from taking effect April 12.
The Supreme Court’s ruling "is binding on this court," the Justice Department said. It should be lifted "as expeditiously as possible," it said.
Kollar-Kotelly’s notice "makes crystal clear that her order enjoining the ban from going into effect remains in place," Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said in a statement.
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