Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order to ban transgender athletes from participating in women's sports at the White House on Feb. 5, 2025. (Lenin Nolly/SOPA Images via TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — Gender Justice League, a Seattle-based human rights organization, is suing President Donald Trump and his administration over its ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Filed by the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal, two leading LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, the lawsuit challenges an executive order Trump signed Jan. 27 that disparages transgender identity and claims transgender people are morally and medically unfit to serve. The executive order will likely receive a number of legal challenges that may delay its implementation.
The complaint argues the executive order’s directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment, and the right to free speech of the First Amendment.
“They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required,” the lawsuit states.
Six current transgender service members who have openly served for years, and one transgender person who seeks to enlist, are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
Three are senior officers with “an impressive military record” who have earned numerous medals and commendations, the lawsuit states. One of the plaintiffs, Sgt. 1st Class Jane Doe, is a 37-year-old transgender woman who has served in the United States Army for more than 17 years and is currently stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
“Many of these folks have been serving 19, 20, 21 years, sacrificing an immense amount for our country,” said Danni Askini, executive director of national programs at the Gender Justice League.
“I think the proof of their service contrasts so starkly from the preamble of the executive order, which is just spiteful, hateful, bigoted in the worst terms.”
Trump’s executive order, which claims “the Armed Forces have been afflicted with radical gender ideology,” directs Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to promptly “end invented and identification-based pronoun usage.”
The order also directs the secretary to update the department’s military medical standards within 60 days and declares that the armed forces cannot allow “males to use or share sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities designated for females.”
“Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,” Trump’s executive order stated.
The executive order was one of a slew Trump has signed in recent days concerning transgender people. He has issued directives banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports, halting federal funding for pediatric gender-affirming care, and declaring the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, and that “these sexes are not changeable.”
Until Hegseth submits his plan within 30 days for how the Defense Department will implement the executive order, many of the details regarding how people now serving in the military will be affected remain unclear.
That’s left many military members feeling confused and fearful about losing their jobs and the potential effects to their retirement, health care and GI benefits, said Lambda legal counsel Sasha Buchert.
“They’ve invested everything they’ve had in this career and are deeply concerned about this being stripped away,” she said. “To put on their uniform and possibly pay the ultimate sacrifice, and this is the thanks they’re getting?”
Since the order, at least one transgender service member based in South Carolina was forced to leave the women’s dorms and barred from using the women’s restrooms. In an emergency legal filing, the service member said she was told she must either be classified as a man or be separated from the military.
While Askini said she has not heard of anyone who’s been discharged, she said the executive order “sends a message of the inhumanity of trans people” that threatens the safety of current and prospective service members.
“It erodes the chain of command and instills a sense of vigilantism and bigotry, and allows individual actors to target and harass trans people,” Askini said.
A similar lawsuit was filed by GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights against the Trump administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia the day after the president signed the executive order.
A 2014 report by the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School estimated about 21% of transgender people have served in the military, about twice the rate of the general population. Buchert said many transgender people — who disproportionately face poverty and employment discrimination — view military service as a pathway to stability.
Estimates vary on how many military personnel are transgender. The 2014 report estimated about 15,500 transgender adults are serving in the U.S. military, including those on active duty and those in the Reserves and the National Guard. The study estimated roughly 0.6% of adults who have served in the armed forces identify as transgender.
Askini estimates that more than 1,000 transgender and nonbinary people in Washington state — which has the seventh-highest active-duty military population in the U.S. — are currently serving on active duty, in the National Guard or in the Reserves.
The executive order appears to go further than a 2019 policy from Trump’s first term, which banned transgender people from enlisting or seeking services to medically transition while serving.
That policy allowed people in the military who were already out as transgender to continue to serve. President Joe Biden reversed the ban soon after he took office in 2021.
Buchert said Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign plan on filing a preliminary injunction “as soon as possible” to halt the ban from taking effect.
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