Within 15 hours of Trump's executive order, transgender troops and advocates filed a lawsuit alleging that the new restrictions are violating constitutional guarantees of equal protection.

Trump’s order to push out transgender troops, issued late Monday night, was instantly condemned by an array of activist groups as exceptionally egregious and ultimately harmful to military readiness. They say transgender people have been serving successfully for years, including openly on and off for the past decade.

The order reinstates a policy from Trump's first term that prohibited trans people from enlisting and barred those already in the military from transitioning.