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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."
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 and proves 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 where only their biological sex was recognized
for bathroom facilities, sleeping quarters and even in official
recognition, such as being called “Sir” or “Ma'am.”
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, it's 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.
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