CNN
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The Pentagon plans to kick out currently serving transgender service members who don’t meet specific requirements under its new policy, according to official guidance made public in a Wednesday court filing.
“Service members who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria will be processed for separation from military service,” says a memo outlining the policy, which was signed by the official performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness. The memo was included in a court filing as part of an ongoing lawsuit over the Pentagon’s policy.
“The Department only recognizes two sexes: male and female,” the policy memo says. “An individual’s sex is immutable, unchanging during a person’s life. All service members will only serve in accordance with their sex.”
The policy guidance follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in January directing the Pentagon to implement its own policies that say transgender service members are incompatible with military service. It’s unclear how many transgender individuals serve in the military; in 2018, an independent research institute estimated there were 14,000 transgender troops serving.
The exceptions for removal from military service are if there is a “compelling Government interest … that directly supports warfighting capabilities” and if the individual is willing to adhere to all standards “associated with the applicant’s sex.”
A service member will also be able to be retained if they demonstrate “36 consecutive months of stability” in their sex with no “clinically significant distress or impairment,” if they can prove they have “never attempted to transition to any sex other than their sex” and if they are willing to adhere to “all applicable standards” relating to their sex.
The document detailing the Pentagon’s new policy emerged in the court filing as part of a legal challenge to Trump’s executive order. During recent hearings in the case, US District Judge Ana Reyes said the executive order is “arguably rampant with animus” — signaling she could be inclined to rule in favor of several trans service members and two trans individuals hoping to join the military who brought the lawsuit last month.
But Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, agreed to hold off on deciding whether to indefinitely block the order until she saw the department’s official guidance implementing it. More written legal arguments from both sides will be submitted in the coming days, and the judge is set to hold another hearing in the case later next month.
A similar ban Trump issued in 2017 drew at least four lawsuits arguing the prohibition represented an unconstitutional form of sex discrimination. Federal district courts across the nation temporarily blocked the ban from being implemented, but the Supreme Court eventually let the ban take effect in 2019 without ruling whether it was constitutional. Biden reversed Trump’s policy in 2021.
The Pentagon’s new policy is far stricter than the policy under the first Trump administration’s ban, which allowed troops who had joined before the policy took effect to be grandfathered in and continue serving. The policy made public on Wednesday directed that service members being separated will be considered non-deployable until they are removed from service. It also says no funds from the Defense Department will be used for any surgical procedures relating to “sex reassignment surgery, genital reconstruction surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria, or newly initiated cross-sex hormone therapy.”
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
