Transgender / Transsexual

A federal judge Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from enlisting or serving in the military. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C., ruled that the ban violates the equal protection clause because it discriminates based on transgender status and sex. 

Reyes said the ban “is soaked in animus.”

“Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she wrote.

She added, “Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them.”

Reyes delayed the effect of her preliminary injunction until Friday to give the administration time to appeal it. She added in her order that the government “could have crafted a policy that balances the Nation’s need for a prepared military and Americans’ right to equal protection.”

“They still can,” she said. “The Military Ban, however, is not that policy. The Court therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice called Reyes’ order “the latest example of an activist judge attempting to seize power at the expense of the American people who overwhelmingly voted to elect President Trump.” 

“The Department of Justice has vigorously defended President Trump’s executive actions, including the Defending Women Executive Order, and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson said in an email. 

Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is representing several trans service members and trans people who want to enlist in a lawsuit, said Reyes acted quickly “to shield our troops from the harmful effects of this irrational ban.” 

“The ban’s harmful impact and rushed implementation show that it was motivated by prejudice,” Minter said in a statement. “Our plaintiffs include lifelong military personnel who served in combat in Afghanistan, come from multi-generation military families, and have received honors like the Bronze Star. This ban is unjustifiable and attacks brave servicemembers, recruits, and families who sacrifice so much for our country.” 

Trump’s order goes much further than a similar policy he issued during his first term, which prohibited trans people from enlisting and allowed those already serving to continue doing so in a manner consistent with their gender identities and continue receiving transition-related medical care if they came out before the ban. Service members who came out after it were not allowed to receive such medical care and had to continue serving in a manner consistent with their assigned sexes at birth. 

The new policy prohibits trans people from enlisting and requires the military to identify all trans service members who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria,” which is the medical term for the severe emotional distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex, according to a memo the Defense Department filed in the lawsuit last week. 

Those identified by the Pentagon will be disqualified from service and must be removed from their jobs. They will receive honorable separations unless their records reflect otherwise, according to the memo.

In January, two national LGBTQ legal organizations, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the the National Center for Lesbian Rights, filed suit against Trump’s executive order on behalf of six active-duty trans service members and two trans people seeking to enlist. They argued that the ban discriminates against trans people and “reflects animosity toward transgender people because of their transgender status.”

The order, the lawsuit said, declared that being trans fundamentally “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

The order said, “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” 

Reyes pushed Justice Department attorney Jason C. Lynch on that language during preliminary hearings last month, asking repeatedly whether he believed it showed animus against the trans community. 

“Would it be fair to say that excluding a group of people from military service based on unsupported assertions that they are liars, immodest, lack integrity, are undisciplined and are dishonorable, would you agree with me that — particularly where there’s no support for any of those assertions — that that is animated by animus?” Reyes asked Lynch, who declined to answer. 

Multiple Defense Department memos also say enlisted service members will be required to use pronouns and salutations, such as “sir” and “ma’am,” that align with their birth sexes. Reyes pressed Lynch about how pronoun usage affects military readiness. 

“I don’t —” Lynch said, before the judge interrupted him.

“Because it doesn’t,” Reyes said. “Because any commonsense rational human being understands that it doesn’t.”

Transgender veterans will no longer be provided hormone therapy through the Department of Veterans Affairs, unless they were already receiving such care through the department or the military, the VA announced Monday.

The reversal of the decade-old policy comes just days after the VA rescinded a 2018 directive that required the department to treat trans veterans “with respect and dignity.” The directive required coverage of mental health care, hormone therapy, pre-surgery evaluation and care after surgery as medically necessary. The VA has never covered gender-affirming surgery for veterans. 

The rescinded directive also required health care providers to address veterans by their gender identity, which included using their requested pronouns and preferred name.

According to Monday’s announcement, trans veterans who weren’t already receiving treatment for gender dysphoria, which is the medical term for the severe emotional distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex, will not be able to access it through the VA. 

“I mean no disrespect to anyone, but VA should not be focused on helping Veterans attempt to change their sex,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement Monday, adding that the “vast majority” of veterans and Americans agree, though he did not point to any data that supports that claim.

“All eligible Veterans — including trans-identified Veterans — will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law,” Collins said. “But if Veterans want to attempt to change their sex, they can do so on their own dime.” 

Any money saved by curtailing treatments for gender dysphoria “will be redirected to help severely injured VA beneficiaries — such as paralyzed Veterans and amputees — regain their independence,” the VA said.

In addition to ending coverage of hormone therapy for veterans who weren’t already receiving it, the VA will also no longer provide gender-affirming prosthetics, wigs or letters of support for veterans to access transition-related surgery outside of the VA.

Veterans who receive care in VA facilities will also be required to use “intimate spaces,” such as bathrooms and locker rooms, in accordance with their birth sex, the VA announced.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, condemned the VA’s announcement. 

“Transgender veterans share the same commitment and the same love of country as all other veterans,” she said in a statement. “They made the same sacrifices and are owed the same respect and care after their service. Despite this, the VA has decided to turn its back on transgender veterans who committed their lives to serving in our armed forces—complying with an Administration hellbent on harming and scapegoating the transgender community.”

The policy change was brought on by President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that there are only two, unchangeable sexes, the VA said. The executive order has resulted in sweeping changes regarding trans people across the federal government, from government web pages that mention trans people to passport policies. 

The VA has been providing treatment for gender dysphoria for more than a decade, according to the department’s announcement, which added that the Veterans Health Administration estimates indicate that less than one-tenth of 1% of the 9.1 million veterans enrolled in VA health care are trans, which would be about 9,100 veterans. That number is far lower than previous research has found. The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimated in 2014 that about 134,300 trans people are veterans or are retired from the Guard or Reserve, though it’s unclear if they would all be eligible for VA health care. 

Trump also issued an executive order prohibiting trans people from serving or enlisting in the military. The policy requires all trans people who are currently serving to be separated from the military by next month. Several trans service members and trans people who planned to enlist filed a lawsuit in January to block the policy, and a judge is expected to issue a decision in the case this week.

A majority of Americans, 58%, favor allowing openly trans people to serve in the military, though support has declined, from 66% in 2021 and 71% in 2019, according to Gallup data released last month. The drop was driven primarily by Republican survey respondents, Gallup found. 

In recent years, Republicans have increasingly supported policies that target transgender people, particularly trans youth, by prohibiting trans students from playing school sports on the teams that align with their gender identities and barring them from accessing transition-related health care. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared Friday that state court orders to change the sex markers on Texas birth certificates, driver’s licenses and other state-issued IDs are no longer valid.

State agencies have already prohibited transgender people from changing the sex markers on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses through internal policy changes last year. Paxton’s new directive requires them to go further and revert back any sex marker changes that were the result of court orders. The directive is the first of its kind nationwide and marks yet another escalation in the state’s nearly decadelong effort to restrict the rights of trans people. 

“There are only two sexes, and that is determined not by feelings or ‘gender theory’ but by biology at conception,” Paxton said in a statement Friday. “Radical left-wing judges do not have jurisdiction to order agencies to violate the law nor do they have the authority to overrule reality. In Texas, we will follow common sense and restore any documents that were wrongfully changed to be consistent with biology.”

Paxton’s directive came via a nonbinding legal opinion in response to a request from Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), in September. McCraw asked the attorney general whether Texas courts have the authority to order state agencies to change a person’s sex designation on government documents. If they don’t, McCraw continued, do agencies like DPS have the authority to revert back sex markers for trans Texans whose documents were changed by court orders?

McCraw said in his request that there has been a “years-long and state-wide effort to alter government records to reflect gender identity.” He added that judges who approve sex-marker changes on documents “may do so with no scrutiny whatsoever,” citing local news reports about lawyers helping trans clients update their Texas documents.  

Transgender advocates say IDs that accurately reflect a trans person’s gender identity are critical to their safety. Documents that show their birth sex and not their lived gender, they say, can cause problems while going through airport security and traveling, starting a new job — where their ID could out them as trans to an employer — voting in elections or interacting with law enforcement. 

However, McCraw said state documents are required to reflect sex, which he defined as “a binary and fixed biological fact” referring to the presence of two X chromosomes or the presence of a Y chromosome, and that accurate identification “has obvious implications for public safety.” Conservative officials have often cited a similar definition of sex, even though scientists estimate that 1.7% of people are born intersex, meaning they have sex characteristics that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female. 

Ash Hall, an LGBTQ policy and advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Texas, said nonbinding legal opinions, like Paxton’s, cannot supersede court orders.

“State agencies have no authority to retroactively change anyone’s valid legal documents,” Hall said in a statement. “If state agencies attempt to implement this non-binding opinion, it would be an unlawful waste of resources that will not hold up in court nor stand the test of time. We should all have identity documents that match who we are as a matter of basic safety and Paxton cannot erase transgender Texans’ right to exist.”

McCraw’s letter and Paxton’s legal opinion are the latest efforts from Texas officials to roll back the rights of trans Texans. 

In 2023, the state enacted legislation that prohibits transition-related care for minors and barred trans student athletes from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities. 

Many of the state’s policy changes targeting trans people have circumvented the legislature, by agencies choosing to change their policies internally or by Paxton issuing legal directives for them to do so. In March 2022, after state lawmakers failed to pass a bill restricting transition-related care for minors, Paxton issued a legal opinion and directive that resulted in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services opening child abuse investigations into parents who were suspected of having provided such care to their minor children, though the directive was later blocked by a judge.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and Department of State Health Services also both quietly prohibited trans people from updating the sex markers on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates in August and September. The state justified those changes earlier this year citing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that declares the federal government will recognize only two, unchangeable sexes. 

So far this year, Texas lawmakers have introduced nearly 200 bills targeting LGBTQ people, according to Equality Texas, a state LGBTQ advocacy group. 

Last week, Republican state Rep. Tom Oliverson filed a bill that could charge trans people with a state jail felony — punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000 — if they identify their birth sex incorrectly on state documents or to employers. The bill doesn’t have any other sponsors and is unlikely to pass, but it’s the first of its kind in the nation. 

Texas isn’t alone in its efforts to restrict IDs for trans people. Florida agencies rolled out similar policies last year, and, as a result, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has started invalidating drivers licenses it issued to trans people with updated sex markers and issuing them new licenses showing their birth sex.