Loophole on transgender troops denies 2 commissions

Definitive policy due July 1 for each military branch.

WASHINGTON — Not long after the Defense Department lifted its ban on transgender troops last year, a West Point cadet named Riley Dosh came out as a transgender woman. She figured she would transition while serving in the Army, as other transgender soldiers have done.

“As cadets we’re told not to hide,” Dosh said. “So I felt it would be dishonest to continue hiding.”

But coming out of hiding has carried a price. Dosh, 22, is one of two transgender cadets — the other is at the Air Force Academy — caught in a kind of military limbo. After four years of training to become officers, they are being denied their commissions because of a loophole in Pentagon policy that its chief author says he did not foresee.

At issue are rules governing “accessions” — the military’s term for accepting new recruits or officer candidates.

Pentagon officials say the transgender policy, released in October, covers only those on active duty — not new recruits or new officer candidates. Each service, and each service academy, is expected to issue its own guidelines for accessions later this month, so that transgender people may enlist, or enroll in school, beginning July 1. The two cadets are being treated as new officer candidates.

But Brad Carson, a former acting undersecretary of defense who is the architect of the transgender policy, said its authors “envisioned that the same rules that apply to active-duty service members today would also apply to service academy personnel, because they’re already in the military.”

Dosh put it this way: “Why am I different than the numerous transgender officers enlisted who are already currently serving and have been allowed to transition?”

Critics of the policy have argued that having transgender people in the armed forces would hurt military readiness; in an opinion piece in The Hill in December, Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group, called on President Donald Trump to rescind the rules.

Sprigg wrote that the policy “might actually make the military a magnet for people seeking ‘gender reassignment’ at taxpayer expense.”

A study by the RAND Corp. last year estimated that 2,450 of the 1.2 million active-duty members of the military, or 0.2 percent, are transgender, and that every year an estimated 65 would seek to transition to the other gender.

The study found that transitions — including hormone therapy and medical procedures like surgery — would cost the Pentagon $2.9 mil- lion to $4.2 million a year, a tiny fraction of its $610 billion budget. Some transgender troops are already taking advantage of the medical benefits.

Among them is Blake Dremann, 35, an active-duty Navy officer stationed at the Pentagon. He began his transition to male from female in 2013, he said, “well before the policy was remotely talked about.”

Since then, he has gone through a double mastectomy, while assigned to a submarine, and has had chest reconstruction surgery, paid for by the taxpayers under the new policy.

The taxpayers have also financed Dosh’s education; a degree from West Point, one of the nation’s premier public military academies, is worth more than $225,000, according to the academy’s website.

“That’s a big investment for the military to make on somebody, when they’re just going to say, ‘Go get a civilian job,’” said Matt Thorn, executive director of OutServe, an organization that provides legal services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender members of the military. His organization is pressing Pentagon officials to reconsider their position.

Dosh said she “came out to myself ” in April of last year, when she was a junior. In June, the defense secretary at the time, Ash Carter, announced that the ban would be lifted; in August, at the outset of her senior year, Dosh saw a behavioral health specialist at West Point, who gave her a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — the first step toward a transition.

She was hoping to begin transitioning while at West Point, but was told she would have to wait until she received her commission. She still wears a male uniform and keeps her hair cut short, as is required for male cadets, and said she had been told she cannot wear makeup.

The superintendent of West Point, Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen Jr., sought a “medical waiver” from the Pentagon to allow Dosh her commission. But the request was denied, a Pentagon spokeswoman said, because Defense Department officials “did not think it appropriate” to grant a waiver while the accessions policy was still under review.

Both the Air Force cadet and Dosh are welcome to apply for civilian jobs. Dosh, a math major, said her dream was to find work as a math teacher.

“The Army is losing a good officer for bad reasons,” said Sue Fulton, a member of the West Point Board of Visitors who has been an advocate for Dosh.