A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to produce documents it used to implement its ban on transgender troops.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the government to disclose information related to the decision first announced by President Donald Trump in a July, 2017 tweet.

“Plaintiffs are entitled to complete discovery,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “[D]espite the fact that one of Defendants’ main defenses in this action is that their decisions regarding transgender military service are owed great deference because they are the product of reasoned deliberation, study and review by the military, Defendants have withheld nearly all information concerning this alleged deliberation. This is not how civil litigation works. Defendants cannot prevent Plaintiffs from obtaining the facts about a disputed issue and then expect to be granted summary judgment on that issue.”

In the lawsuit, Doe v. Trump, the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and GLBTQ Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) represent current and aspiring transgender service members. It was the first of four lawsuits filed challenging the ban.

“This is the third court to rule that the government must produce documents to justify its decision to exclude otherwise qualified transgender people from military service,” Shannon Minter, legal director at NCLR, said in a statement. “This administration is not above the law. Today's ruling once again confirms that the government must obey the same rules applied to other litigants in our nation's courts.”

Trump has claimed that the Obama administration “failed to identify a sufficient basis” to end the military ban – which was rolled back in June, 2016 – and he ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the policy, arguing that transgender people are a “disruption” to the military. Trump said that he based his decision on the recommendation of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who formed a panel of military experts to study the issue. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern reported that Vice President Mike Pence and several Christian conservatives opposed to LGBT rights played a leading role in the creation of the panel's report.

(Related: Mike Pence, Tony Perkins, Ryan Anderson helped craft report on Trump's trans military ban.)