WASHINGTON – The Pentagon has disclosed the details of its new policy on transgender troops in a court document submitted on Wednesday. According to the filing, any individual in the service or seeking to enlist who has received a diagnosis or treatment for gender dysphoria will be ineligible to serve, except if they can demonstrate their fulfillment of a specific military requirement and comply with strict limitations on their daily actions.
This policy memorandum was presented as part of the most recent court submission in a legal challenge against President Donald Trump’s directive opposing transgender military participation, which was among the key issues the president focused on during his initial days in office.
Similar to the executive order, the policy outlined on Wednesday contends that the effectiveness and cohesiveness of the military are compromised by the challenges faced by transgender individuals as they go through gender transitions, asserting that a person’s gender is “unchangeable and enduring throughout their 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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