Transgender Service Members Sue Trump Over Military Ban

Several transgender service members and prominent LGBTQ+ rights groups are suing President Donald Trump over an executive order he signed late Monday, directing the Defense Department to ban transgender people from openly serving in the military, reinstating and expanding a policy he put in place during his first administration.

The ban was widely expected as the Trump administration moved quickly to implement a government-wide broadside against transgender people, declaring on his first day in office that there were “only two sexes.”

“Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” Trump’s military order states. “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.”

Newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also opposed what he and Trump have called “woke” policies in the Pentagon.

Hegseth — who has opposed LGBTQ+ people from serving in the military — said during his confirmation hearing in January that the department’s “DEI policies” are “dividing troops inside formations, causing commanders to walk on eggshells, not putting meritocracy first.”

The service members suing Trump have military experience ranging from a year of service to 17 years, as well as two individuals who want to enlist. The suit argues that Trump’s ban violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

“Trump’s order was issued without any study of the effectiveness of transgender service members during the past four years or of any problems that may have arisen from their service, without any assessment of whether their service entailed greater costs, or without any assessment of whether any legitimate governmental concerns could be addressed by means other than a categorical ban,” the suit states.

The Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal — two groups that sued the Trump administration when he issued the order in his first administration — called it “discriminatory and dangerous.”

“Expelling highly trained members of our military undermines military readiness and wastes years of financial and training investments. It also needlessly upends the lives of families who have already sacrificed so much,” said Sarah Warbelow, HRC’s vice president of legal. “The Commander-in-Chief should prioritize our military’s safety and readiness, not use his position to issue bans on entire groups of people. This order is unconstitutional, and we will see this administration in court.”

Lambda Legal Counsel Sasha Buchert said the order “compromises the safety and security of our country and is particularly dangerous and wrong. As we promised then, so do we now: We will sue to block this action.”

The independent research organization Palm Center estimated in 2018 that there are over 14,000 currently serving trans troops. A 2020 study found that trans people “appear twice as likely” as the general population to serve in the military.

The ban comes at a time in which almost all armed forces branches have been struggling to meet their recruitment targets.

Trans people were not allowed to serve in the military until 2016, when the Obama administration adopted a policy allowing them to “serve openly” and declaring that trans service members cannot be “discharged or otherwise separated from the military solely for being transgender individuals.”

A year later, the Trump administration reversed the policy. The president said in the summer of 2017 in a series of tweets that trans people should not be allowed “to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military” because it “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.” While federal courts initially blocked the order, the Supreme Court allowed it to take effect.

Ultimately, the Biden administration rescinded the ban in 2021.

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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.