It didn’t take long for the White House to join the Pentagon in fighting an injunction against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. They went to the 9th Circuit to seek immediate relief from the injunction and to allow the military to return to the status quo ante:
The Obama administration on Wednesday asked a federal appeals court to immediately suspend a judge’s ruling that overturned the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays.
The government says it wants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco to take action on Wednesday. The federal government is preparing arguments for the appeals court on why the ruling on “don’t ask, don’t tell” should be suspended while the case is appealed.
The Obama administration says it is in favor of repealing the law. However, the government says that letting the ruling of U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips to go forward immediately would be a major problem for the military.
For now, of course, this is really the only practical course of action for Barack Obama, but it’s going to cost him. His progressive base will howl in indignation, mainly because the judicial intervention creates a new status quo that will be difficult to reverse after a year or two. As Phillips certainly must have foreseen, an injunctive period of any length will bolster the legal and political arguments for eliminating DADT and allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces. If Obama hoped to wheedle and plead for more enthusiasm in the midterms, this is going to make the Left even more likely to sit on their hands, at least in terms of organizing and donations.
However, it’s difficult to see how the administration could have chosen to surrender to the injunction. Even those who support the end of the policy must recognize that the Pentagon will need some time to plan the transition and roll out training. Doing it through a temporary injunction means introducing a great deal of uncertainty in the status of individuals who enlist as openly gay members, and those who want to come out while currently in uniform. If for some reason the injunction does get lifted down the road and the Supreme Court reverses Phillips’ ruling, the consequences of changing the policy back to DADT will create readiness issues and a lot of trauma to the men and women who presumed their positions were safe, as well as the units to which they belong.
I doubt, however, that the appeal to the 9th Circuit will have much effect either way. They don’t have a reputation for being the most overturned federal appeals circuit for nothing. The real question will be whether the White House appeals a decision by the 9th that upholds the injunction to the Supreme Court.
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