How the military is dealing with Hegseth’s order to remove transgender troops
Legal Review
The military services scrambled Friday to nail down details and put together new guidance to start removing transgender troops from the force.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a memo released late Thursday, reinstated orders issued earlier this year that said “expressing a false gender identity divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
His new order gives active duty troops until June 6 to identify themselves as transgender and voluntarily begin to leave the service. National Guard and Reserve troops have until July 7.
Army Maj. Alivia Stehlik, who served in the infantry and is now a physical therapist, will be eligible to retire in three years but doesn’t want to be forced out for being a transgender service member.
“I still have a job to do,” she said. “My command expects me to show up and be an officer and do my job because I’m the only person at my unit who can do what I do.”
The military services were rushing to put out new guidance to help commanders work through the process, including what to do in more complex situations, such as if any of the troops are deployed, at sea or may require special orders or funding to meet the deadlines.
In 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter broached the idea of lifting the ban on transgender troops and allowing them to serve openly, which raised concerns among military leaders. He set up a study, and in June 2016 announced the ban was over.
Reinstating that ban has long been a goal for President Donald Trump.
Six months into his first term, Trump announced he was not going to allow transgender people to serve in the military “in any capacity.” That set off a roughly two-year struggle to hammer out the complex details of how that would work, even as legal challenges poured in.
The Pentagon eventually laid out a policy that allowed those currently serving to stay and continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. But it barred new enlistments of anyone with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or had transitioned to another gender.
Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.
That ban was overturned by then-President Joe Biden. When Trump took office again this year, he directed Hegseth to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender troops.
In late February, Pentagon leaders ordered the services to set up procedures to identify troops diagnosed with or being treated for gender dysphoria by March 26. And it gave them 30 days to begin removing those troops from service.
A flurry of lawsuits stalled the ban. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could enforce the ban, while other legal challenges proceed.
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