This policy has no legitimate government justification and in fact is only intended to render trans men and women second class citizens.

I don't think that the entirely appropriate arrest of the president's friend of 40 years

is the triggering mechanism for concerns about federal arrests.

Hi, and welcome back to Amicus.

This is Slate's podcast about the Supreme Court, the courts, and the rule of law.

I'm Dahlia Lithwick, and I cover some of those things for Slate magazine.

And there is just a whole lot of news on every one of those fronts this week.

The Supreme Court itself seems to have roused itself from its relatively slumberous, autumnal state to do some kind of attention grabby things these past few days.

Just last week, the court agreed to take on what may prove to be its first major gun rights case since the court ruled in 2008 and then again in 2010 that with certain exceptions, the government could not prohibit people from having handguns in their homes for self-protection.

And as we tape this episode, the court is actually deciding whether to get involved with the case out of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that essentially just nullified the Supreme Court's ruling in Whole Women's Health v.

Hallerstadt in 2016. The justices are being asked by plaintiffs to reverse the Federal Appeals

Court decision to uphold a Louisiana law that's almost identical to the Texas law. The justices found

unconstitutional. If the High Court declines to get itself involved, courts around the country are going to be emboldened to just act as though whole women's health no longer has the force of law.

Stay tuned.

But we are going to turn our attention this week to the decision by a five-form margin to lift two nationwide injunctions that

had stopped Donald Trump's ban on transgender troops serving in the military. In a moment,

we're going to talk to Sharon McGowan. She's the chief strategy officer and legal director of

Lambda Legal about what that actually means and what might happen next.

Later on in the show, we're going to try to do a quick catch-up with some of the Rockham-Soccom developments in the Mueller probe with Joyce White Vance.

She's a former U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama.

And she's going to help us make some sense of Roger Stone and raids and CNN and Whitaker and all the things that are happening in Muellerland.

First, let's look at Donald Trump's ban on transgender service members.

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