After the Trump administration asked the supreme court to issue an unusually quick ruling on the Pentagon’s policy of restricting military service by transgender people, critics said the request was likely only to complicate a deteriorating relationship between the president and the federal judiciary.
Joshua Matz, the publisher of the liberal Take Care blog, said the timing of the move could hardly be worse for chief justice John Roberts and other justices who have sought, under attack from Donald Trump, to dispel the notion the court is a political institution, especially since the politically fraught confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh.
The Trump administration is “forcing [the court] into a minefield that many justices would almost surely prefer to avoid”, Matz said.
The request on the issue of trans troops is the fourth time in recent months the administration has sought to bypass lower courts that have blocked some of its more controversial proposals and push the high court, which has a conservative majority, to weigh in quickly on a divisive issue.
Earlier this month, the administration asked the high court to fast-track cases on Trump’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), which shields from deportation young undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.
Administration officials also asked the high court to stop a trial in a climate change lawsuit and to intervene in a lawsuit over the administration’s decision to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census.
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