The Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday to allow the Department of Defense to begin implementing its ban on transgender-identifying individuals serving openly in the military has, unsurprisingly, sparked a new media firestorm.
But while the ruling itself was legally sound and within the High Court’s authority, some media outlets—most notably The Hill—used the news as an excuse for a thinly veiled editorial tirade dressed up as journalism.
At issue is the Trump-era policy, now set to move forward after the Supreme Court lifted injunctions issued by lower courts. The plan bars individuals with gender dysphoria who are undergoing hormone therapy or have transitioned from serving in the military, on the grounds that they are not deemed medically or operationally fit for deployment.
The Pentagon, under then-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, argued the decision was rooted in military readiness and unit cohesion—not identity politics.
But rather than scrutinize the legal rationale or the strategic merit of the policy, The Hill’s report quickly unraveled into a highly charged, partisan response. The article’s opening paragraph claims the ruling “undermines” the lower courts’ decisions—an odd assertion, given the Supreme Court’s very role is to override or affirm lower rulings. The piece also characterized the Trump administration’s actions as part of a broad effort to “restrict transgender rights,” with no attempt to contextualize the military’s unique standards or operational demands.
Even more revealing is the article’s framing of objections to the policy. Instead of engaging with the Defense Department’s arguments, the piece dismisses them outright and draws comparisons to historically discriminatory bans against black, gay, and female service members—an emotionally potent but logically mismatched analogy that ignores the core medical and logistical criteria being debated here.
After noting dissent from the Court’s liberal justices, the article devolves into a string of criticisms from activist groups like Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign. The voices of 32 transgender service members are included, expressing fears of “reputational, professional, and constitutional harm,” while legal advocates accuse the Trump administration of harboring “an unprecedented degree of animus” and denying the very existence of transgender people.
The piece closes by quoting the executive order itself, only to frame it as another example of “opprobrium and discrimination.”
Missing from the report? Any serious engagement with the longstanding military principle that all service members must be fit to deploy at any moment. No exploration of how cross-sex hormone regimens or gender-affirming surgeries could compromise that readiness. No mention of the fact that the policy does not remove all transgender individuals from the military but rather restricts those whose medical needs could interfere with mission-critical duties.