Braxton Taylor
President Donald Trump has moved to again ban transgender people from serving in the military.
In an executive order signed Monday night, Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to craft a policy on transgender troops that reflects the administration’s policy that being transgender is “not consistent” with military service.
The order leaves most of the details to the Pentagon to figure out, including what will happen to currently serving transgender troops. But the language in the order goes far beyond arguments that transgender troops present medical challenges to the military and attacks the very idea of being transgender, suggesting Trump is aiming for a more extensive ban than during his first time in office.
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“Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,” the order says in its “purpose” section. “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
While the extent of the ban is still unclear, the order immediately triggered a lawsuit from two advocacy groups.
The order, which follows actions Trump took last week to lay the groundwork for it, gives the Pentagon 30 days to report back on its plans to implement the directive and 60 days to actually update its policy on transgender troops so it reflects the purpose of the executive order and the administration’s policy that “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity and integrity” are inconsistent with being transgender.
One part of the order appears to go into effect immediately: a mandate that, “absent extraordinary operational necessity,” the military must separate sleeping quarters and bathrooms by sex assigned at birth, rather than gender identity. That would mean transgender men have to use women’s facilities, and transgender women would have to use men’s facilities, regardless of what stage of their transition they are in. It also directs Hegseth to “promptly” issue policies to end the use of pronouns that align with gender identity.
The language of the executive order also maligns mental health issues broadly, after years of the military trying with varying degrees of success to reduce the stigma around seeking that type of health care. The purpose of the order states that “many mental and physical health conditions are incompatible with active duty, from conditions that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality and prior psychiatric hospitalization.”
In a statement attributed only to a defense official, the Pentagon said Tuesday it “will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the executive orders issued by the president, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives.”
Hegseth, on his personal social media account, also posted Monday night that “we will execute” the transgender order and other military-related orders Trump signed that night.
Speaking to Military.com on Monday in anticipation of the executive order, Laila Ireland, a transgender Army veteran who is now a civilian federal employee, and her husband, Logan, a currently serving transgender member of the Air Force, said they are ready to continue serving their country as long as they are allowed to.
“When I’m overseas, and let’s say we’re in a conflict situation where rounds are coming down range, the men and women to my left and right don’t care that I’m trans,” Logan Ireland said. “They care about me being able to lay effective fire down range and then come to their aid.”
Kicking out transgender troops, many of whom serve in senior enlisted ranks, would also “erase decades of institutional knowledge and leadership essential to maintaining operational excellence,” added Laila Ireland.
“We’re gonna continue to put on our boots and put on our uniform the way that we have before,” she said. “We will continue to keep pushing forward because this fight does not just affect trans service members. This fight affects everyone. And when we begin to see that bigger picture, when a lot of folks begin to see the bigger picture and the impact it’s going to have, I think at that point we might be too late.”
Transgender troops were first allowed to serve openly at the end of the Obama administration in 2016.
But, during Trump’s first term in 2017, he announced on social media that he would “not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.”
The formal Pentagon policy that resulted from Trump’s social media pronouncement was somewhat more narrow because it allowed transgender troops who came out under the Obama administration policy to keep serving in their gender identity.
Former President Joe Biden lifted Trump’s ban during his first week in office in 2021, and transgender troops have been serving openly with no reported issues since then.
On Tuesday, Trump’s GOP allies in Congress cheered the return of a transgender military ban.
“President Trump has made it clear: Our military will be focused on protecting our nation,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said in a statement on the transgender ban and other executive orders. “No longer will our military waste time implementing the far-left woke policies of the Biden administration. Our warfighters will be focused on lethality, capability and readiness.”
Unlike the order issued Monday that contends that simply being transgender goes against military values, the policy in the first administration focused on medical treatment.
Fears and speculation that Trump would enact a full ban this time and kick out currently serving transgender troops have been swirling since he was elected in November after promising on the campaign trail that he would order “every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.”
During his confirmation process, Hegseth repeatedly sidestepped questions about LGBTQ+ troops. Earlier this month, when asked in written questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee whether he has any evidence that transgender troops harm readiness, he said only that he was “committed to ensuring that the department’s accessions and medical standards provide the structure necessary to create a ready and lethal force.”
If the Pentagon were to kick out currently serving transgender troops, it’s unclear how many service members would be affected.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly said they do not track the number of transgender troops. But a defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that officials are aware of how many troops have an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, though those numbers were not readily available.
Gender dysphoria is the medical term for the distress that’s caused when someone’s gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth, and not all transgender people are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
A Rand Corp. study from 2016 estimated that somewhere between 1,300 and 6,600 transgender troops were serving at that time. Meanwhile, in a number often cited by advocacy groups, a 2014 report from the University of California Los Angeles’ Williams Institute estimated that up to 15,500 transgender adults were serving in the military.
Several lawsuits were filed against the ban on transgender troops during Trump’s first term. While advocates had some earlier success in getting courts to block the ban while the lawsuits worked their way through the legal system, the Supreme Court ultimately allowed the ban to take effect in 2019.
Groups who backed the lawsuits challenging the ban in the first Trump administration, including Human Rights Campaign; Lambda Legal; the National Center for Lesbian Rights, or NCLR; and GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, or GLAD Law, vowed ahead of the order to sue again.
NCLR and GLAD Law made good on the threat Tuesday, filing a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of six active-duty service members and two people actively seeking to enlist. The lawsuit argues the ban violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
“This ban betrays fundamental American values of equal opportunity and judging people on their merit,” Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, said in a written statement. “It slams the door on qualified patriots who meet every standard and want nothing more than to serve their country, simply to appease a political agenda. That’s not just un-American, it makes our country weaker by pushing away talented service members who put their lives on the line every day for our nation.”
— Konstantin Toropin contributed to this story.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with information and quotes on a newly filed lawsuit.
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