Transgender rights advocacy groups filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order that targeted transgender service members, in what would be the first legal challenge to a cornerstone of his conservative agenda at the Pentagon.
Trump signed an executive order on Monday that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way — at one point saying that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
The lawsuit, filed jointly by GLAD Law and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) in a district court in Washington D.C., challenges the constitutionality of the executive order and said it violated the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The plaintiffs include six transgender service members and two individuals looking to join the military.
Reuters was first to report plans to file the lawsuit.
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The executive …