The United States will start discharging transgender troops from the military within 30 days unless they receive a waiver on an individual basis, according to a Pentagon memo released on Wednesday.
The memo was made public as part of a court filing in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s late-January executive order, which sought to prohibit transgender individuals from serving in the military.
“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,” the memo read.
These troops may be “considered for a waiver on a case-by-case basis, provided there is a compelling government interest in retaining the service member that directly supports warfighting capabilities,” it said.
To obtain such a waiver, troops must show that they have never attempted to transition, as well as demonstrate “36 consecutive months of stability in the service member’s sex without clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”
Transgender Americans have experienced fluctuating policies regarding military service in recent years, with Democratic administrations advocating for their inclusion, while former President Donald Trump repeatedly attempted to bar them from serving.
The U.S. military first lifted the ban on transgender service members in 2016, during President Barack Obama’s second term.
Under the 2016 policy, transgender troops already serving were allowed to do so openly, and new transgender recruits were scheduled to be accepted starting July 1, 2017.
However, the Trump administration first postponed that date to 2018 before ultimately deciding to reverse the policy entirely.
Trump’s controversial restrictions—modified over time due to multiple court challenges—eventually took effect in April 2019 after a lengthy legal battle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
President Joe Biden, Trump’s Democratic successor, moved to overturn the restrictions just days after taking office in 2021, stating that all qualified Americans should have the right to serve in the military.
However, after returning to office in January, Trump issued a new executive order targeting transgender military service, declaring that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
Transgender issues have become a major political battleground in the U.S., with Democratic and Republican-led states adopting opposing policies on matters such as medical treatment and the inclusion of books on the topic in public and school libraries.
