Jan 20, 2025; Washington, DC: Donald Trump salutes as he participates in a Reviewing the Troops Ceremony as part of his Inaugural activities
President Donald Trump is expected to soon order the U.S. military to ban transgender service members in the armed forces.
The directive will reportedly accompany a twin order gutting the military branches’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts and also follows an executive order from his first day in office directing the federal government to recognize only two “immutable sexes,” male and female.
Related:
Trump began his latest assault on trans service members on the same day, revoking a Biden order that overturned Trump’s first transgender service ban enacted in 2019, effectively clearing the decks for today’s expected executive action.
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The latest order is expected to direct the Department of Defense under newly sworn-in Secretary Pete Hegseth to formulate and implement a purge of transgender troops and officers.
A White House document previewing the order and shared with The New York Post described transgender service members as not being “physically or mentally prepared to” carry out their duties and used that argument as the basis for banning them from service.
“Unit cohesion requires high levels of integrity and stability among service members,” the preview states, adding, “It can take a minimum of 12 months for an individual to complete treatments after transition surgery, which often involves the use of heavy narcotics.”
“During this period, they are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements and require ongoing medical care. This is not conducive for deployment or other readiness requirements.”
It asserts there can be “no accommodation for anything less than resilience, strength, and the ability to withstand extraordinary physical demands” and “Individuals who are unable to meet these requirements are unable to serve in the military.”
“This has been the case for decades,” the document claims.
The order will also direct Hegseth to ban the “use of invented and identification-based pronouns” in the military; prohibit “biological males and females” from sleeping, changing and using bathing facilities intended for the opposite sex; and “update all Department of Defense medical standards to ensure they prioritize readiness and lethality.”
As with Trump’s first, unilateral transgender service ban — issued by tweet in 2017 — the president will rely on the Department of Defense to justify the claims in his order after the fact through formal policy and implementation.
His first ban was immediately challenged in court, and an injunction on its enactment lasted nearly two years before the Supreme Court lifted it in 2019. A case on the merits of banning transgender service members in the military has yet to be heard by the high court.
“We’ll challenge it pretty much right out of the gate,” Shannon Minter, a trans attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, told LGBTQ Nation last week in anticipation of the order. He said he’s been in contact with over a hundred potential plaintiffs ahead of a renewed ban.
Today, he called Trump‘s repeated targeting of transgender service members “a stain on our military.”
“Anyone who meets standards should be able to serve,” Minter said. “There are already thousands of transgender service members currently in the military who have met the standards and more than proven themselves.”
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