The White House announced orders to formally ban transgender people from serving in the military, following Donald Trump's controversial order, which sparked widespread backlash in July last year from civil rights groups and US defense chiefs. Despite opposition from senior military officials and previous rulings against the ban, a Defense Secretary memo released Friday night said transgender people are “disqualified from military service except under certain limited circumstances.” The memo did not detail what these possible exceptions might be, but stated that the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security “may exercise their authority to implement any appropriate policies regarding military service by transgender individuals.” At the end of last August, Trump had given the Pentagon a deadline of March 23, 2018 for the body to develop a new specific policy for transgender people. On Friday night, a report published by the Pentagon distinguished between transgender people who want to change their sex or have already had the operation, and people who identify as a different sex but do not want medical procedures. According to the report, the former will not be allowed to join the Armed Forces, while the others will. In the text, the decision is justified, among other reasons, by the “disproportionate” medical costs that the latter represent. TRANS POSE RISK TO MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS The announcement said the policy was “developed through extensive studies by senior civilian and military leaders” and said that, based on the advice of “experts,” the government concluded that “adherence or maintenance” of transgender people “poses considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.” Last year, when Trump originally announced the ban on Twitter, he asserted that the military “cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs” generated by transgender people in the military, even though studies have already shown that the ban would have negative impacts on military. Critics argue that the discriminatory policy will cause significant disruption in the military, force trans members to hide their identities, deprive the military of talented people, and reinforce harmful and inaccurate stereotypes about trans people. NULLING OBAMA-ERA MEASURE Trump's policy reverses that of Barack Obama, who, in 2016, ended a long-standing rule that prevented trans people from serving openly in the Armed Forces. “What the White House released today is transphobia disguised as politics. And this policy is not based on an assessment of new evidence,” said Joshua Block, senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBT and HIV Project, in a statement Friday night. This directive from Trump had already been blocked by federal courts in four separate cases, the lawyer noted. “The policy effectively coerces transgender people who wish to serve,” Block said in the statement. “Transgender people in our military deserve better from their government than a myth-driven proclamation about their unfitness for full civic inclusion.” Sarah McBride, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ rights group in the US, also condemned the policy in a statement: “Releasing this decision under the cover of darkness on a Friday night means thousands of transgender troops will waking up tomorrow with their lives turned upside down. This couldn’t be more cowardly and wrong,” she wrote. SENATORS AND GENERALS AGAINST TRUMP Numerous Republican senators, including John McCain, Susan Collins and Orrin Hatch, criticized Trump's policy on the issue, and more than 50 retired generals and admirals signed a letter saying the ban would degrade military readiness. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi criticized the new announcement in a statement: “This latest memo is the same cowardly and disgusting ban that the President announced last summer. No one with the strength and bravery to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces should be removed because of who they are.”
