Too often, national security and personal liberties are portrayed as inversely related. This is simplistic, and also clearly wrong. After all, in the absence of security, it would be impossible to enjoy our freedoms at all. Nevertheless, some of the hardest national security choices are inevitably those that involve tradeoffs with civil liberties. The need to gather information on our enemies rubs up against expectations of privacy. The eroding line between war and law enforcement endangers principles of due process. And the need to keep secrets increasingly leads to tension with a robust free press.
Latest in Civil Liberties and Constitutional Rights
But the lack of tailoring—the careful fitting of means to chosen ends—in the military’s transgender policy should prompt the courts to look more closely at the Trump administration’s rescissions of various measures followed or implemented by the Obama administration.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a stay of the preliminary injunction in Stone v. Trump, removing, in the government’s view, the sole remaining obstacle to implementation of the ban on transgender service members.
Several legal aid organizations filed a class-action lawsuit on Feb. 12 in New York challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement practice of denying in-person hearings to immigrants.
Muthana and Begum left their home countries to join the Islamic State and now are seeking to return—but neither the U.S. nor the U.K. will allow them back.
On Feb. 22, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas ruled that the male-only Selective Service System (SSS) violates Fifth Amendment Equal Protection principles.
The cases will move forward through the normal appellate process with the ban against transgender servicemembers in place.
On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in Davidson v. Randall that a Virginia county official who blocked a constituent's access to the official’s Facebook page had violated the First Amendment. The court held that the official’s Facebook account amounted to a “public forum” and that blocking constituent access based on political viewpoints is unconstitutional. The full ruling is below.
An update in the ongoing litigation over the Trump administration's ban on military service by transgender people.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined on Nov. 30 to grant the government's motion for a stay of the court's preliminary injunction halting implementation of the ban on military service by transgender individuals. The court's order is available here and below.
On Nov. 23, the Trump administration filed petitions for a writ of certiorari before judgment in three lawsuits challenging its ban on military service by transgender people, preempting rulings by the courts of appeals.