Trump is Looking to Boot Transgender Troops from the Military. Here's Why That's Complicated

This Isn't the First Time

In 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter broached the idea of lifting the ban on transgender troops and allowing them to serve openly, which raised concerns among military leaders. He set up a study, and then about a year later, in June 2016, announced the ban was ended.

A year after that, just six months into his first presidential term, Trump suddenly announced via tweet he was not going to allow transgender people to serve in the military "in any capacity." The tweets caught the Pentagon by surprise and plunged leaders into what became a roughly two-year struggle to hammer out the complex details of who would be affected by the ban and how it would work, even as legal challenges poured in.

By March 2019, as courts ruled against the ban, the Pentagon laid out a policy that allowed those currently serving to continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. But it barred new enlistments of anyone with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or had transitioned to another gender. And it said in the future those diagnosed with gender dysphoria must "serve in their birth gender" and were barred from taking hormones or getting transition surgery.

Soon after President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he overturned Trump's ban and the Pentagon also announced it would cover transition medical expenses for troops.