The lawsuit before Reyes was filed in late January by a group of more than a dozen transgender active-duty service members, one person enlisted in U.S. Army basic training and five transgender people who were in the process of enlisting. They argued that the ban was unconstitutional and sought a court order blocking its enforcement.

In her decision, Reyes found that the challengers were likely to succeed on their claim that the ban fails the highest level of judicial scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, because it classifies based on sex and transgender status. The judge also held that the Trump administration’s policy is likely driven by unconstitutional animus.

The highest level of judicial scrutiny for constitutionality is not intermediate scrutiny, but strict scrutiny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny

In U.S. constitutional law, when a law infringes upon a fundamental constitutional right, the court may apply the strict scrutiny standard. Strict scrutiny holds the challenged law as presumptively invalid unless the government can demonstrate that the law or regulation is necessary to achieve a “compelling state interest”. The government must also demonstrate that the law is “narrowly tailored” to achieve that compelling purpose, and that it uses the “least restrictive means” to achieve that purpose. Failure to meet this standard will result in striking the law as unconstitutional.

In the United States, the standard is the highest and most stringent standard of judicial review and is part of the levels of judicial scrutiny that US courts use to determine whether a constitutional right or principle should give way to the government’s interest against observance of the principle. The lesser standards are rational basis review and exacting or intermediate scrutiny. These standards are applied to statutes and government action at all levels of government within the United States.