Braxton Taylor
In what appear to be the first steps toward restricting transgender military service, President Donald Trump has rescinded the previous administration’s order allowing transgender troops to serve openly and issued his own order requiring all federal agencies to revoke any policies that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.”
Trump’s actions on his first day in office Monday did not in and of themselves ban transgender troops from serving. But lawyers who fought Trump’s transgender military ban during his first term in office say the actions signal his second administration’s values and lay the groundwork for a follow-up executive order banning transgender troops.
“We absolutely expect a more specific order” banning transgender military service, said Shannon Minter, the legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which sued the first Trump administration over its transgender military ban. “Transgender people are still with us and will continue to be part of our society. You can’t just disappear them with an executive order. So [Monday’s executive order] feels more like a sort of symbolic statement than an offer of any sort of concrete policy or guidance.”
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As part of an avalanche of executive orders Trump signed hours after taking the oath of office Monday, he rescinded dozens of executive orders issued by former President Joe Biden, including the order Biden issued days into his term that directed the Pentagon to allow transgender people to serve openly in the military.
Rescinding Biden’s order does not repeal the Pentagon’s policies allowing transgender troops to serve, but it is a necessary administrative step should Trump later issue a ban, Minter said.
Further, a separate executive order that Trump signed Monday said the federal government will not acknowledge the existence of transgender people and directed all federal agencies to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages.”
While a plain reading of the broad anti-transgender executive order would appear to apply to the Pentagon, its practical effect is unclear.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on how it expects the order to affect the Pentagon or whether the administration is planning any additional executive action specifically addressing transgender military service.
The Pentagon declined to comment Tuesday on how it is interpreting its responsibilities under Monday’s executive order.
Trump has been widely expected to ban transgender military service following pledges on the campaign trail to roll back protections for transgender people and because he banned transgender troops during his first term. Following Trump’s reelection in November, several international news outlets reported that his aides were drafting an executive order to medically discharge all transgender service members.
While the Pentagon has said it does not track the number of transgender service members, estimates from outside researchers and advocacy groups put the number anywhere from 1,300 to 15,000. Currently serving transgender troops have said they are just trying to serve their country as they brace for whatever comes next.
In 2017, during his first term, Trump posted on social media that he would “not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.” The official Pentagon policy that followed was somewhat narrower, but was still effectively a ban on transgender troops, reversing an open service policy that was first put in place in 2016.
The social media posts and subsequent Pentagon policy spurred several lawsuits from transgender troops, transgender people who had hoped to enlist, and their advocates. Despite some early wins in getting courts to block the ban while the lawsuits worked their way through the legal process, the Supreme Court ultimately paved the way for the ban to take effect in 2019.
Minter said he and his co-counsel from the lawsuit during Trump’s first administration are ready to sue again if and when the president moves to ban transgender troops. He’s more hopeful of success this time, he said, because of a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that said federal anti-discrimination laws apply to transgender people. Additionally, there’s now a longer track record of transgender people serving in the military without issue.
“Back then, the equal service policy had just been adopted,” Minter said of the first Trump ban. “Now, we have four years of transgender people serving under an equal service policy, and there have been no problems. No problems. Nothing but a track record of success. This is clearly not in response to any problem with the current policy. It’s an expression of bias against transgender people.”
Other advocacy groups are also previewing lawsuits against any policies that result from Trump’s Day One executive orders.
“We are exploring every legal avenue to challenge these unlawful and unconstitutional actions,” Kevin Jennings, CEO of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Lambda Legal, said in a news release about Trump’s anti-transgender executive order. “In the next four years, we may not be able to litigate every odious anti-LGBTQ policy change, but rest assured, attacks on our communities will not go unanswered.”
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