Filing asks transgender-ban halt
WASHINGTON — Two gay-rights organizations asked a federal judge in Washington on Thursday to bar President Donald Trump from changing the government’s policy on military service by transgender people.
The groups, backed by several former military leaders, filed a motion asking the judge to grant a preliminary injunction to keep Trump from reversing course on a 2016 policy change that allowed transgender individuals to serve openly.
Trump slammed that policy in a memo Aug. 25 and announced that he was directing a return to the former policy under which service members could be discharged for being transgender. Trump directed the Pentagon to extend indefinitely a ban on transgender individuals joining the military, and he gave Defense Secretary James Mattis six months to come up with a policy on “how to address” those who are currently serving, leaving the door open to permitting their continued service.
Trump also directed Mattis to halt the use of federal funds to pay for sex-change surgeries and medications, except in cases when it is deemed necessary to protect the health of an individual who has already begun the transition.
Lawsuits challenging the president’s directive have been filed in courts in Washington, Seattle and Baltimore.
The Washington lawsuit was filed in early August after Trump wrote on Twitter in July that the federal government “will not accept or allow” transgender individuals to serve “in any capacity” in the military. The groups behind the lawsuit, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, wrote in their court filing Thursday that the president’s “directive broke faith with transgender men and women who counted on their government’s promise that they could serve openly.”
“It is an unprecedented attack on service members who have committed their lives to serve the United States,” the groups wrote, saying it is also an unconstitutional violation of their clients’ rights to equal protection and due process.
As part of the preliminary injunction motion filed Thursday, several former military leaders said in court papers that changing the open service policy would hurt the military. The former officials — including former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, former Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James and former Army Secretary Eric Fanning — served during Barack Obama’s administration, which in June 2016 began to allow troops to serve openly as transgender individuals.
James said Trump’s “abrupt reversal of policy is harmful to military readiness because it erodes service members’ trust in their command structure.” Fanning said the president’s action “disrupts years of careful research, planning, and implementation work,” “creates a new distraction for senior leadership” and is “deeply harmful to morale.” And Mabus said Trump’s “stated rationales for reversing the policy and banning military service by transgender people make no sense,” adding that the issues were carefully studied before the 2016 change.
Trump’s memo announcing the changes said the Obama administration “failed to identify a sufficient basis to conclude” that allowing the service of transgender people would not harm the military and “tax military resources.”
The Pentagon has not released data on the number of transgender people currently serving, but a Rand Corp. study has estimated between 1,320 and 6,630, out of 1.3 million active-duty troops. The study estimated that each year, between 29 and 129 service members would seek transition-related care at a cost to the military of $2.4 million to $8.4 million.
The Pentagon’s yearly budget is more than $600 billion.
On Thursday, three more people were added to the Washington lawsuit, bringing the total to eight. Previously, the lawsuit included five unnamed transgender people serving in the Air Force, the Coast Guard and the Army. The group now includes two named plaintiffs — Dylan Kohere, a college student and member of his school’s ROTC, and Regan Kibby, a 19-year-old student at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Kibby, who said in an interview that he always wanted to serve in the military and whose father served in the Navy, came out as transgender in college. He said he went through a lengthy, sometimes frustrating process in order to be able to serve openly as a man.
“I did everything I was told to do,” he said. He said he is now concerned he will not be allowed to graduate from the Naval Academy and serve in the Navy. Joining the lawsuit was a way to combat his feelings of helplessness, he said.
A Pentagon spokesman directed questions about lawsuits challenging the president’s decision to the Department of Justice. A department spokesman said Thursday evening that the agency is “examining the claims in the motion and conferring within the government.” A White House spokesman declined to comment on active litigation.