The United States of America is founded upon the idea that all men are equal, where the difference between the beggar and a king is merely clothes. We now inherit this concept as all people being free, equal and inheriting the same rights as any other citizen of the country. The Trump administration, Supreme Court and Republicans up and down the country have refuted this foundational assertion with their ceaseless attacks against transgender Americans, violating the law of the land and the spirit of the nation.

Minutes after being sworn into the Office of the President, Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders. Within these orders were six executive orders that target transgender Americans, according to KFF. The most egregious of these and blatantly anti-American is the ban on transgender service members in the military.

In a democratic nation, the ability of all of its citizens to participate in its armed forces is a standard for recognizing the equality of citizenship. The integration of the military by Harry Truman in 1948 remains a defining moment in American history and helped legitimize the post-WWII struggle of Black Americans and veterans. It was a key stepping stone on the way to fulfill the promises of the Constitution. By banning trans Americans from the military, Trump pries at the foundations of their citizenship, destroying the progress made from our past and creating a secondary-class of citizens. No recognition of different classes of citizens is American.

The Supreme Court has joined in the crusade against trans Americans with their recent decision in United States v. Skrmetti. In the decision, which drew comparisons to the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that allowed for the segregation of Black and white Americans, Chief Justice John Roberts and his five Republican colleagues issued a ruling that allowed Tennessee to enforce a law discriminating against transgender youth while denying that the law targets them because they are transgender.  Instead, they invented a justification for the law, saying it legally discriminates against young trans Americans for their age and medical condition.

The ruling also refuses to classify trans Americans as a suspect class, which would recognize them as likely being the targets of discrimination. This comes as Trump freely uses executive orders to instruct hospitals to cease care for trans youth or lose federal funding, to threaten funding of school districts that accept their trans students and to write trans, nonbinary and intersex Americans out of federal recognition.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the logic used by the Court’s majority decision would bring the decision of Loving v. Virginia into question, which outlawed bans on interracial marriage.

“The majority emphasizes that, in Tennessee, ‘no minor may be administered puberty blockers or hormones to treat gender dysphoria,’ while ‘minors of any sex may be administered puberty blockers or hormones for other purposes.’” Justice Sotomayor wrote in the dissent. “But nearly every discriminatory law is susceptible to a similarly race-or sex-neutral characterization. A prohibition on interracial marriage, for example, allows no person to marry someone outside of her race, while allowing persons of any race to marry within their races.”

The drive for an equal country for all Americans emerged in earnest following the Union victory over the Confederates in 1865. The Civil War amendments to the Constitution abolished slavery, mandated all laws apply equally to citizens and banned discrimination against Americans for their race or if they were previously enslaved. Congress further asserted the principle of equality in the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its amendments.

Underpinning the modern philosophy of equality for all is the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. It was the guiding principle of the 1964 CRA and many Supreme Court decisions that have recognized the rights of Americans of all stripes. A president who takes aims at the marginalized and a Court that does not recognize their equality goes against the principles of the United States. In their active opposition to the letter of the Constitution, the Supreme Court is anti-American.

Trans, nonbinary and intersex Americans are not some recent phenomenon. Johns Hopkins opened its Gender Identity Clinic in 1966, which conducted gender reassignment surgery on patients. There are accounts of people born as women not only enlisting as men to fight in the Civil War, but to go on and live as men for most of their lives. Public Universal Friend, a nonbinary preacher, predates the Constitution. Intersex people have always existed as a matter of nature’s impreciseness in everyone.

All of the anti-trans laws passed by Republicans at the state level nationwide are not returning to some recently forgotten past where trans people did not exist, but creating a new reality where they aim to eliminate trans Americans from public life.

As Republicans are fond of saying, we are a constitutional republic not a democracy. Instead of honestly abiding that distinction, they rip up our Constitution, destroy our rule of law, use our legislatures, our Congress, our presidency and our courts to conduct their persecution of trans Americans. They do not believe in the guiding principle of equality of all. They do not believe in the principles the country aspired to and won wars for. They are anti-American.