Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Vallejos and Daniel Domingo appealed their cases to the Court of Final Appeal, and were respectively assigned the case numbers FACV 19 and 20/2012. They would be represented before the CFA by Michael Fordham; David Pannick continued to represent the Government. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma rejected a further application for joinder by eight-year-old Liang Wing-ki, the Hong Kong-born daughter of mainland parents, whose next friend, mother Li Yinxian, filed suit on her behalf. Philip Dykes, for the applicant, argued that because Vallejos and Domingo's case would touch on issues of interpretation of the Basic Law under Article 158, Liang's interests would also be affected. In rejecting Liang's application, Ma stated: "We feel that the points you seem to argue are adequately covered and will be adequately covered". Liang and other Hong Kong-born children like her were ruled to be entitled to the right of abode in Hong Kong in the 2001 case "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen".
Doe v. Trump (2017)
On November 21, 2017, the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) appealed the preliminary injunction in the case of "Jane Doe v. Trump". One day later, on November 22, USDOJ filed a motion seeking to clarify whether Secretary Mattis had independent authority to modify the original directive issued by Secretary Carter in 2016. The original Directive-type Memorandum (DTM) 16-005 permitted accession (entry to military service through enlistment or enrollment in a Service Academy, ROTC, or other similar program) of transgender individuals starting on July 1, 2017, and Secretary Mattis had modified DTM 16-005 just before accession was set to start by imposing a six-month delay to allow for a study of the effects on force "readiness and lethality". In their motion opposing the clarification, Plaintiffs claimed the Defendants were seeking a "substantive change to the Court's injunction" and the Court subsequently issued another order on November 27, 2017. In the order, Judge Kollar-Kotelly clarified the Order of October 30 effectively reverted the policy back to the "status quo" that existed prior to the Presidential Memorandum of August 25, meaning that accession of transgender individuals will proceed as scheduled starting January 1, 2018, per Secretary Mattis's modification issued June 30, 2017 to DTM 16-005.