The Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court Thursday to let a ban on transgender military service members take effect while litigation challenging it continues.

Back in January, President Trump signed an executive order to crack down on “gender radicalism in the military” and discharge service members who identify as transgender.

“The district court’s universal injunction will remain in place for the duration of further review in the Ninth Circuit and in this Court—a period far too long for the military to be forced to maintain a policy that it has determined, in its professional judgment, to be contrary to military readiness and the Nation’s interests,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the administration’s application to the high court.

The San Francisco-based Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the lower court’s injunction to remain in effect while legal fights played out, which means the Supreme Court is the Trump administration’s last resort for quick action.

The Trump administration had been sued by seven transgender military service members and one aspiring service member over the ban. Those eight plaintiffs have been backed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law.

“This Court should stay the district court’s injunction in its entirety,” Sauer insisted. “At minimum, this Court should stay the injunction except as to the eight individual respondents in this case.”

Former President Barack Obama’s administration had permitted openly transgender individuals to serve in the military, but Trump reversed that during his first term and faced similar litigation. Eventually, the US Supreme Court allowed his ban to take effect, but former President Biden scrapped it.

“This case does not plow new ground. In 2018, then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis adopted a policy, materially indistinguishable from the one at issue here, that generally disqualified individuals with gender dysphoria from military service,” Sauer argued.

Trump argued in his executive order that “a man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s subsequent policy to prohibit transgender service did not entail exceptions.

There is limited data on how many transgender service members are in the military, but the total number is believed to represent less than 1% of total active-duty service members.

A 2016 Pentagon study estimated there were 8,980 active duty and 5,727 reserve troops who identified as transgender, according to a 2018 report by the Palm Center, a California-based think tank.