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There are hard truths in military life that a humane society may dislike but cannot repeal. The first is that military service is not an entitlement. It is a calling, yes; an honor, certainly. But it is also a profession whose members must be prepared to deploy, fight, endure privation, and, if necessary, die in defense of the Republic.
Not every patriotic American can meet that standard. Many cannot, through no fault of their own.
That point, obvious until it became out of fashion for some, has been obscured in the litigation over President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14183, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s implementing policy regarding service by individuals with gender dysphoria. The order and policy have been denounced as discrimination.
After a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a preliminary injunction pausing implementation of the order, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit earlier this month, in a 2-1 ruling, affirmed the lower court and enjoined Hegseth’s policy as it related to plaintiffs already in the military, but vacated the preliminary injunction as it related to those seeking accession into the military.
The majority opinion was written by Judge Robert L. Wilkins (an Obama appointee) and was joined by Judge Judith W. Rogers (a Clinton appointee). It was, as far as we’re concerned, unpersuasive.
In his magisterial dissent, Judge Justin Walker (a Trump appointee) isolates the core question in this case: who decides the qualifications for service in the armed forces — Congress and the Commander in Chief, advised by military professionals, or life-tenured federal judges?
Judge Walker’s answer is both modest and correct. The Constitution assigns military governance to the political branches. Congress raises and regulates the armed forces; the President commands them. Judges, by contrast, are trained to decide cases and controversies, not to determine who can be deployed to a forward operating base, who can endure combat stress, or what aggregate risks the services may prudently assume. Walker’s dissent is admirable precisely because it practices the judicial restraint that others too often praise only when it produces their preferred results.
Nothing in that conclusion requires callousness toward people who suffer from gender dysphoria. They deserve compassion, dignity, and lawful treatment. Many have sincere desires to serve their country, and some have done so honorably. But sympathy cannot be permitted to cloud judgment about the mission of the armed forces. The military is not a therapeutic institution, a laboratory for social experimentation, or a vehicle for vindicating every asserted identity. Its purpose is to deter war, fight war, and win war.
For that reason, military medicine has always drawn lines that civilian life need not draw. Applicants and service members may be disqualified because of cardiomyopathy, epilepsy, severe scoliosis, psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, limb loss, severe hearing loss, connective-tissue disorders, serious allergies, and scores of other physical and mental conditions. No one imagines that the military thereby declares those Americans less worthy as human beings. It declares only that the profession of arms imposes demands that not everyone can satisfy.
Gender dysphoria belongs in that same analytic category. The relevant question is not whether those who experience it are entitled to respect. They are. The question is whether the condition, its persistence, its symptoms, and the medical interventions often associated with it are compatible with military readiness, deployability, unit cohesion, and lethality. The literature and scientific studies reviewed by military authorities show beyond any reasonable doubt that gender dysphoria is inconsistent with the rigors of military service in the same way many other listed disqualifying maladies are inconsistent with service.
That is not a moral condemnation; it is a military judgment. The armed forces cannot function if readiness standards become aspirational rather than mandatory. A soldier who cannot deploy is not merely unavailable to himself; he imposes burdens on his unit, his commanders, and the mission. Combat arms, intelligence, logistics, aviation, cyber operations, and medical support all depend upon reliability under stress. The military must know, before a crisis arrives, who can go, who can stay, and who can be counted upon when hesitation is measured in lives.
Judge Walker grasped that elementary reality. His dissent did not pretend that judges possess secret competence in military personnel policy, deployment calculus, or battlefield risk. To the contrary, he candidly acknowledged that courts lack both the expertise and constitutional warrant to decide whether particular medical conditions are compatible with service. That humility is not abdication. It is fidelity to the separation of powers.
The contrary approach is dangerous. Once courts treat military qualification standards as invitations to free-ranging judicial revision, every disqualification can become a constitutional controversy. If federal judges may override the considered judgment of the Secretary of War on gender dysphoria, why not on depression, seizure disorders, severe orthopedic limitations, or any other condition that renders service more hazardous or less dependable? The logic has no principled stopping point.
Nor is the government’s policy some unexplained spasm of prejudice. Executive Order 14183 invokes the military’s central mission: readiness, cohesion, lethality, discipline, uniformity, and deployability. The Department of War then applied that judgment through medical and personnel standards. Critics may quarrel with the policy, but disagreement is not proof of unconstitutionality.
In military affairs, the question is not whether a district judge would have balanced the evidence differently; it is whether the political branches have acted within their constitutional authority and on a rational military basis.
Walker’s dissent is therefore valuable not merely because it reaches the right result, but because it resists a fashionable temptation: to convert judicial power into a roving commission to supervise the armed forces. Courts have an indispensable role in preserving constitutional liberty. But they do not command platoons, crew ships, maintain aircraft, or send Marines into harm’s way. The Constitution did not entrust them with those responsibilities because judges cannot bear their consequences.
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Charles “Cully” Stimson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the Acting Director of its Institute for Constitutional Government. Helen Nguyen is a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.
