[1][2] Two other major LGBT-rights organizations which had filed Jane Doe v. Trump, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, joined the suit as co-counsels in October 2017.

[3] In addition to President Trump, the amended suit named as defendants the Secretaries of Defense (James Mattis), the Army (Ryan McCarthy, acting), the Navy (Richard Spencer), the Air Force (Heather Wilson), and Homeland Security (Elaine Duke).

[2] Trump first announced a policy banning transgender people from serving in the military in "any capacity" in a series of tweets on July 26, 2017, stating that allowing such service members would incur "tremendous medical costs and disruption".

[7] The complaint seeks an immediate injunction based on the Fifth Amendment, and in it, EQCA noted "the stated bases offered in support of Defendants' August 25 Directive are pretextual, arbitrary, capricious, and unsupported by facts, evidence, or analysis" and that "transgender people have been serving openly [since 2016] without incident or any negative impact upon military readiness, lethality, unit cohesion, or the national defense generally.

[8] The United States Department of Justice Civil Division (USDOJ) filed a motion to dismiss on October 23, using the same arguments as previously filed in Jane Doe v. Trump and Stone v. Trump, which called the challenge "premature several times over" because "Plaintiffs are suffering no injury during the interim period" while Secretary Mattis's Interim Guidance of September 2017 was in effect during the six-month study period before submitting a recommendation for a final policy.

In the response, the lawyers for the plaintiffs called the Interim Guidance a "red herring" and argued "the absence of any rational basis for the ban, its facial targeting of a disfavored group, and the highly unusual circumstances under which it was adopted lead to the inescapable inference that it is based on animus—discrimination for its own sake—and not on any legitimate military concerns.

"[19]: 2  The motion to intervene also noted that President Trump's July 26 announcement via Twitter "was rendered without any significant analysis and lacks a rational basis.

Consequently, the government must proffer a justification which is "exceedingly persuasive," "genuine," "not hypothesized," not "invented post hoc in response to litigation," and "must not rely on overbroad generalizations."

"[29] The USDOJ immediately filed a motion to dissolve the preliminary injunction, arguing the case was moot since President Trump had shifted responsibility for the proposed ban in the March 2018 memorandum: "If Plaintiffs fear future injury from the proposed new policy, which they have not challenged, those harms would stem from the independent action of the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security in implementing that policy, not the 2017 or 2018 Memoranda.

"[30]: 7–8  In addition, USDOJ argued "The new policy, by contrast, contains several exceptions allowing some transgender individuals, including many Plaintiffs here, to serve, and it is the product of independent military judgment following an extensive study",[30]: 8  citing the panel of authors responsible for the Department of Defense report attached to the Mattis memorandum, which had met 13 times in 90 days.