Most transgender US troops banned from serving
PALM BEACH (AP) — United States President Donald Trump released an order on Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under “limited circumstances,” following up on his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.
The White House said retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” — those who may require substantial medical treatment — “presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”
Trump surprised the Pentagon’s leadership in a 2017 tweet when he declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender individuals to serve openly.
His push for the ban has been blocked by several legal challenges, and four federal courts have ruled against the ban.
The Pentagon responded by allowing those serving to stay in the military, and began allowing transgender individuals to enlist beginning Jan. 1.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said his state will continue its legal fight against the ban.
“California will take every measure available to prevent President Trump’s discriminatory action that harms or marginalizes transgender service members — or any other transgender Americans who wish to courageously defend our nation,” he said.
“This new policy will enable the military to apply well-established mental and physical health standards — including those regarding the use of medical drugs — equally to all individuals who want to join and fight for the best military force the world has ever seen,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday.
Congressional Democrats and civil rights groups promptly assailed the new policy.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi tweeted, “No one with the strength & bravery to serve in the US military should be turned away because of who they are. This hateful ban is purpose-built to humiliate our brave transgender members of the military who serve with honor & dignity.”
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender civil rights organization, accused the Trump administration of pushing “anti-transgender prejudices onto the military.”