About 1,000 service members who volunteered to leave the military after the Trump administration unveiled its transgender troops ban will now have their separations processed after the Supreme Court paved the way for the ban to take effect, the Pentagon said Thursday evening.
The Pentagon is also reopening the window to choose voluntary separation following this week’s Supreme Court ruling, giving active-duty transgender troops who want to leave until June 6 and reservists until July 7 to come forward, or face involuntary separation later.
“As the president of the United States clearly stated in Executive Order 14183, ‘Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,’ Jan. 27, 2025, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Thursday memo that directed the military to resume implementing the transgender ban.
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While a Thursday statement from Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said “approximately 1,000 service members who have self-identified as being diagnosed with gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process,” the Pentagon on Friday said it was not able to provide a more specific number of troops being separated.
Meanwhile, two lawsuits against the ban continue. In a filing Friday, lawyers for transgender troops in one of the lawsuits pointed to Hegseth’s memo as further evidence the ban is discriminatory.
“The directive restates the unsupported assertion that ‘expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,’ further corroborating the district court’s finding that the transgender military ban was motivated by animus against transgender people as a group,” Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, wrote in a letter to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration can enforce its transgender military ban while lower courts still consider lawsuits against the policy.
Two appeals courts are still weighing whether to keep in place injunctions that were issued by federal district courts, meaning the policy could still be blocked again. But the Supreme Court ruling paused the injunctions while those deliberations are ongoing, allowing the Pentagon to start separating troops in the meantime.
Under the Pentagon policy, troops with a history of gender dysphoria, who “exhibit symptoms” of gender dysphoria or who have transitioned to their gender identity are now disqualified from service.
The policy, which was issued in February to implement Trump’s January order, also outlined a way for transgender troops to choose to leave the military before they are kicked out. Service members who voluntarily separate are eligible for separation pay that is twice as much as they would receive if they later get booted, according to the policy.
The original deadline for service members to elect voluntary separation was in March, but the injunctions upended that timeline.
Troops who want to self-identify as being transgender now have until June 6 — in less than a month and during LGBTQ+ Pride Month — to come forward if they are on active duty and July 7 if they are in the reserves.
The approximately 1,000 troops who Parnell said will immediately begin the voluntary separation process are troops who came forward in March.
The number of troops the Pentagon claims chose to separate represents about a quarter of the 4,240 active-duty and reservist service members who defense officials earlier this year said have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the feeling of distress caused by someone’s gender identity not matching their birth sex.
Not every transgender person is diagnosed with gender dysphoria, but the Pentagon has said it does not track whether someone is transgender so a gender dysphoria diagnosis in a service member’s medical record is the department’s best way of determining whether they are transgender.
Defense officials at the Pentagon have not been able to say what specific processes are in place to prevent non-transgender troops from saying they are transgender as a way to leave the military. Similarly, it’s not clear how officials will track down trangender troops who have not been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and choose not to come forward.
One official, however, said those answers may come when the individual services eventually release their specific policies.
After the voluntary separation window closes in June for active duty and July for reservists, the Pentagon will begin involuntary separations, Hegseth’s Thursday memo said.
A defense official told Military.com those separations will be based on a review of medical records. They added those reviews have not begun yet.
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