The judge blocking President Donald Trump’s transgender military ban was previously a leftist activist attorney who filed a challenge against President Trump’s border security agenda.
Before former President Joe Biden appointed her as a District Court judge in Washington, D.C., Ana Reyes sued in 2018 to block Trump’s rule requiring illegal border crossers to go through official ports of entry. Reyes, who donated to numerous Democrats, now faces a legal complaint accusing her of bias against Trump’s attorneys for asking them what “Jesus would say” to his transgender policies. Federal donation records show Reyes gave money to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, as well as other Democrats as early as 2008.
Prior to her appointment, Reyes worked for a Washington-based law firm and joined the left-wing groups National Immigrant Justice Center and Human Rights First in 2018 against the first Trump administration. The lawsuit challenged a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rule that denied asylum for migrants who do not pass vetting processes at ports of entry, claiming the policy violated their “right to seek asylum.”
An Obama-appointed judge ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor in 2019, blocking the rule until Biden took office, reversed Trump-era border policies and dropped the case.
Reyes ruled Tuesday that Trump’s January executive order banning people with gender dysphoria from U.S. military service fuels “discrimination” and blocked the policy. She was lauded as the first openly LGBTQ and Latino woman to serve on the Washington district court when Biden nominated her.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Leaders have used concern for military readiness to deny marginalized persons,” Reyes’s Tuesday ruling said. “First minorities, then women in combat, then gays filled in that blank.”
“Today, however, our military is stronger and our Nation is safer for the millions of such blanks (and all other persons) who serve,” Reyes said.
Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) has argued that “The medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.” Trump’s order said demanding to be treated as the opposite sex “is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Reyes of “hostile and egregious misconduct” in her handling of the transgender case in a February complaint to appeals judges. The DOJ said Reyes complained that Trump is “literally erasing transgender people” and innapropriately questioned a DOJ attorney “about his religious views” during a hearing.
“What do you think Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters?” Reyes said in the hearing, according to the DOJ. Reyes appeared to reference Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announcing it will end a Democrat-backed policy that made federal funding for domestic violence shelters contingent on accepting men into women’s spaces.
“Do you think Jesus would be, ‘Sounds right to me’?” Reyes allegedly asked the DOJ. “Or do you think Jesus would say, ‘WTF? Of course, let them in?’”
Currently, district court judges have assumed the mantle of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security and Commander-in-Chief. Each day, they change the foreign policy, economic, staffing and national security policies of the Administration. Each day…
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) March 19, 2025
The complaint against Reyes adds to ongoing conservative criticism of “activist” judges that the Trump administration says are overstepping their bounds. Judges so far have stalled deportations of suspected gang members and a pro-terrorist college student, cancellations of green energy funding, a policy barring men from women’s prisons, and other Trump directives amid lawsuits.
Reyes’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reyes gave Trump’s officials until Friday to file an emergency appeal in favor of the military policy.
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