The Pentagon revealed the specifics of its transgender troop policy in a court filing Wednesday that says any service member or recruit who has been diagnosed with or treated for gender dysphoria is disqualified from serving — unless they can prove they meet a specific warfighting need and adhere to severe restrictions on their day-to-day behavior.
The memo effectively bans transgender members from openly serving, directing the military to identify service members who have a “current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with,” gender dysphoria within 30 days. It directs officials to then begin separation proceedings within another 30 days.
The policy memo was included in the latest court filing in a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order against transgender military service, one of many hot-button issues the president made a priority to address on his first days in office.
Like the executive order, the policy filed Wednesday suggests that the lethality and integrity of the military “is inconsistent” with what transgender personnel go through as they transition to the gender they identify with, and issues an edict that gender is “immutable, unchanging during a person’s life.”
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The policy provides two exceptions — if transgender personnel who seek to enlist can prove on a case-by-case basis that they directly support warfighting activities, or if an existing service member, who was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, can prove they support a specific warfighting need and never transitioned to the gender they identify with while also proving over 36 months they are stable in their biological sex “without clinically significant distress.”
If a waiver is issued in either case, the applicant would still face a situation in which only their biological sex was recognized for bathroom facilities, sleeping quarters and even in official recognition, such as being called “Sir” or “Ma’am.”
LGBTQ advocates condemned the memo.
“The assertion that gender dysphoria is incompatible with military service is both medically unsound and a blatant disregard for the proven capabilities and dedication of transgender individuals who have served and continue to serve with distinction,” the Modern Military Association of America, an LGBTQ military advocacy group, said in a statement Wednesday. “It sends a damaging message to the world about the values of the United States.”
Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.
While the number of transgender troops serving is small compared to the size of the total force, the discussion surrounding these personnel has taken up a large amount of time and attention both at the White House and within the Pentagon.
The military services due to medical privacy laws do not provide an exact count of transgender troops, but a 2018 independent study by the Palm Center, which researched LGBTQ issues, assessed there were an estimated 14,000 transgender troops among the more than 2 million troops serving.
It was a policy Trump tried to overturn in his first term in office but the issue ended up mired in lawsuits until former President Joe Biden was elected and he overturned the ban.
Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group.
Beth Sullivan is an editor for Military Times. Previously, she worked as a staff reporter for The Daily Memphian and as an assistant editor at The Austin Chronicle.
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