White House preparing rules for military transgender ban

WASHINGTON» The White House is expected to send guidance to the Pentagon in coming days on how to implement a new administration ban on transgender people in the military, issuing a policy that will allow Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to consider a service member’s ability to deploy in deciding whether to kick them out of the military.

The White House memo also directs the Pentagon to deny admittance to transgender individuals and to stop spending on medical treatment regimens for those currently serving, according to U.S. officials familiar with the document.

The 2½-page memo gives Mattis six months to prepare to fully implement the new ban, according to these officials.

Mattis, under the new policy, is expected to consider “deployability”—the ability to serve in a war zone, participate in exercises or live for months on a ship—as the primary legal means to decide whether to separate service members from the military, the officials said.

The policy was announced by President Donald Trump in a series of tweets July 26, which effectively reinstated a ban on open transgender service that had been lifted the year before, under former President Barack Obama, in a move that also provided for military medical care for the condition known as gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria is a condition that many professional associations have said requires medical treatment. For instance, gender dysphoria is recognized by the American Psychiatric Association as a medical issue. When diagnosed by a medical professional, transition therapy and reassignment surgery is considered by some insurers and states as a medically necessary treatment.

Employing the criteria of deployability to remove service members is bound to be greeted with deep opposition.

“Transgender people are just as deployable as other service members,” said Sue Fulton, the former president of Sparta, a military organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that advocates for open service. “Other service members may undergo procedures when they are at home base, just as other service members schedule shoulder surgery or gall bladder surgery.”

Fulton said there are no “ongoing treatments” for transgender service members that would render them nondeployable. “Thus there’s no difference between the deployability of transgender service members” and others, she said.

Pentagon officials have been awaiting policy guidance from the White House since Trump’s July tweets. The move by Obama was among a series of steps toward opening the military to larger segments of the U.S. population. Other steps included rescinding the “don’t ask, don’t tell” prohibition against gays serving openly and opening most combat jobs to women.

In moving to end the transgender ban, however, the Obama administration left some ambiguity. While currently serving transgender personnel were allowed to immediately begin to serve openly, the change set July 1, 2017, as the start of new enlistments by openly transgender people.

Confronted with the enlistment deadline, Trump agreed during the summer with conservative lawmakers who wanted to backtrack on the policy.

“The United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” Trump said in the July tweets.

“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you,” he added.

The tweets sparked criticism among Democrats and LGBT groups and took top Pentagon officials aback. Although Mattis was made aware of Trump’s views on the subject a day earlier, Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford didn’t know the president would announce it in such a manner, officials said.

No planning had occurred on how to reinstate the ban, and the Pentagon was caught flat-footed, officials said at the time of the tweets.

Defense officials have been perplexed about how they can legally or morally justify separating open transgender service members from the service, especially those who were invited to identify themselves when the ban was lifted, officials have said.

Estimates of how many transgender service members are openly serving in the military range from 1,320 to 6,600, according to a Rand Corp. study.