--- title: Transgender Troop Ban Reinstated by Supreme Court description: Hundreds of transgender troops may continue serving in the military, but new recruits will face obstacles under a Supreme Court decision. canonical: https://time.com/5509554/transgender-troop-ban-supreme-court/ author: W.J. Hennigan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2019-01-22T17:56:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:52:58.091Z article:section: Politics og:title: Transgender Troops Will Face Obstacles After Supreme Court Order og:description: The court's conservative majority voted to allow the ban to go into effect. og:url: https://time.com/5509554/transgender-troop-ban-supreme-court/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt43858f7d4720ddd2/69893d48656a3f84bbbd5c81/transgender-science-history.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5888 og:image:height: 3312 og:image:alt: SPAIN-WORLDPRIDE-PARADE og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Transgender Troops Will Face Obstacles After Supreme Court Order twitter:description: The court's conservative majority voted to allow the ban to go into effect. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt43858f7d4720ddd2/69893d48656a3f84bbbd5c81/transgender-science-history.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Transgender Troops Will Face Obstacles After Supreme Court Order > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. Senior correspondent Philip Elliott brings sharp context to the issues driving the capital, connecting the decisions made in Washington to the institutions, industries and people they affect. It is written and edited by TIME journalists, and it is free to join at [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=952afae5-b15a-41a9-a47c-81d612ecc6fd&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1). ### Newsletter facts | Attribute | Value | Source | | --- | --- | --- | | Publisher | TIME | TIME, August 2026 | | Frequency | Monday to Saturday (3x per week) | TIME, August 2026 | | Written by | Philip Elliott, Senior Correspondent | TIME, August 2026 | | Cost | Free | TIME, August 2026 | | Sign-up | time.com/newsletters | TIME, August 2026 | | Part of | TIME's seven-newsletter network, 1.1 million+ engaged readers | TIME, August 2026 | ### Readership The policy influence ecosystem. A policy-focused audience spanning government, public affairs, advocacy, law, research, political media, and the institutions that make, interpret and respond to public policy. ### TIME D.C. Brief: key statements * D.C. Brief is edited by TIME journalists. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ## Video: Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity [Watch (HLS stream): Transgender in the Military: Camouflaged Identity](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/R659iSlZ.m3u8) (14:08)  _Published 2015-07-15. An estimated 15,000 transgender troops currently serve in the U.S. military. Each has risked dismissal from military service for revealing his or her identity. That could all be about to change. Directed by Gillian Laub and Shaul Schwarz_  by [W.J. Hennigan](https://time.com/author/w-j-hennigan/)  ## W.J. Hennigan Jan 22, 2019 5:56 PM UTC  Participants hold a rainbow flag during the WorldPride 2017 parade in Madrid on July 1, 2017\. Revellers took to the rainbow streets of Madrid today in the world's biggest march for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. Participants hold a rainbow flag during the WorldPride 2017 parade in Madrid on July 1, 2017\. Revellers took to the rainbow streets of Madrid today in the world's biggest march for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. AFP Contributor—AFP/Getty Images  by [W.J. Hennigan](https://time.com/author/w-j-hennigan/)  ## W.J. Hennigan Jan 22, 2019 5:56 PM UTC Hundreds of transgender troops may continue serving in the military, but will face obstacles unless they serve “in their biological sex” now that the Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s policy to go into effect while a legal fight unfolds. In a 5-4 decision Tuesday, the court’s five conservative justices cleared a path for the Defense Department to enforce the Trump Administration’s policy banning most transgender Americans from serving in the military. The unsigned order is not a final decision on the policy, but it suggests the justices are likely to uphold the policy when one of the ongoing cases reaches the Supreme Court through appeal, a process that could take years. In the meantime, the ruling is a win for the Administration, which had argued that military readiness and effectiveness were in question. Lt. Col. Carla M. Gleason, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said Pentagon leadership was “pleased” that the Supreme Court had cleared the way for Trump’s policy to go into effect. She added that the Pentagon will continue to work with the Department of Justice regarding next steps in the pending lawsuits. “As always, we treat all transgender persons with respect and dignity,” she said in a statement. “DoD’s proposed policy is NOT a ban on service by transgender persons. It is critical that DoD be permitted to implement personnel policies that it determines are necessary to ensure the most lethal and combat effective fighting force in the world.” Federal judges in the lower courts in California; Maryland; Washington, D.C.; and Washington state had previously issued orders blocking the ban, saying the policy appeared to be unconstitutional discrimination. The Pentagon did not stand in the way of those rulings. The Administration sought to fast-track the arguments by asking the Supreme Court to directly decide whether trial judges were correct to stop the policy from taking effect. The request to bypass the federal appeals court was needed, according to U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco, out of an “imperative public importance.” However, the justices [denied those petitions](https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/012219zor%5F8759.pdf) and instead decided to let the litigation play out in lower courts. [GLAD’s Jennifer Levi](https://www.glad.org/staff/jennifer-levi/), a lead co-counsel in case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said the Supreme Court “saw through the Administration’s contrived efforts to gin up a national crisis,” but she noted that today’s decision will have lasting repercussions. “Unfortunately, the court’s stay of the lower courts’ preliminary orders means that courageous transgender service members will face discharges while challenges to the ban go forward,” [she said in a statement](https://www.glad.org/post/supreme-court-allows-challenges-to-trumps-transgender-military-ban-to-continue-in-lower-courts/). “The Trump Administration’s cruel obsession with ridding our military of dedicated and capable service members because they happen to be transgender defies reason and cannot survive legal review.” Before he left office in 2016, President Barack Obama aimed to make the armed forces more inclusive by allowing transgender men and women to serve openly in the military for the first time, and to seek sex reassignment surgery, hormone therapy and other treatments at military hospitals. The Department of Defense said 937 transgender individuals [came out](http://time.com/4874955/transgender-veterans-reaction-trump-military-ban/), being open about identities they had long hidden for fear of being discharged, and the military started preparing to enlist openly transgender people. A year later, Trump moved to undo the changes Obama instigated. In three Twitter posts in July 2017, Trump said the Pentagon “will not accept or allow” transgender people to serve “in any capacity” in the military. The announcement caught Pentagon leadership flat-footed because many of the military’s top generals and admirals had embraced the transgender policy. All five military chiefs of staff have publicly testified that the transgender policy did not cause readiness issues. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote a memo the following day to commanders and senior enlisted leaders of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines that the military policy on transgender troops would not change until the White House has issued Trump’s directive to then-Defense Secretary James Mattis through formal channels — and not on Twitter. A month later, Trump wrote a presidential [memorandum](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3964535-Trump-Transgender-Military-Memo.html) that said allowing transgender people to serve could “hinter military effectiveness,” “disrupt unit cohesion” and “tax military resources.” Some Republicans have objected to taxpayer funds going toward transition-related medical care, such as gender reassignment surgery. And Trump suggested that additional study was required to make sure the implementation of the new policy would not have “negative effects.” Many transgender troops who had made their identities public were left wondering if they’d accidentally put their jobs at risk. Meanwhile, active-duty service members scrambled for legal protection to block the policy shift. In March 2018, the Pentagon implemented a restrictive policy that stopped short of Trump’s initial sweeping declaration that banned all transgender men and women. The new policy required transgender troops to serve “in their biological sex,” while those who would undergo a transition “would be presumptively disqualified from service.” On Jan. 4, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with this newly defined policy, saying that the Pentagon’s rules did not qualify as a “blanket ban” on transgender troops. “The government took substantial steps to cure the procedural deficiencies the court identified in the enjoined 2017 presidential memorandum,” [the panel said](https://ecf.cadc.uscourts.gov/n/beam/servlet/TransportRoom?servlet=ShowDoc&dls%5Fid=01208091652&caseId=35055&dktType=dktPublic). The RAND Corporation issued [a report](https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/06/30.html) finding that the number of openly transgender people serving in the military would likely “be a small fraction of the total force and have minimal impact on readiness and health care costs.” There is no definite figure for how many transgender people are currently on active duty, but [estimates](http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/military-related/us-transgender-military-service/) vary widely from about 2,500 to 15,500 in an active-duty force of about 1.3 million. ## Transcript When I found out I was going to Afghanistan, a lot of people were like, excited. Some people were shaken up. But I was more optimistic at the fact that I could, you know, maybe die and not have to face the reality of, you know, the life that nobody knew. I have a family. I had a wife, I had my pets, and I had things to come back to. But at the same time, those didn't mean anything to me because I wasn't able to be me with God, as you know, as a main focus of my life. I made a bet with him. I was like, Hey, 5050, you know, if I flip this coin and it lands on heads, I keep my heads off the lions on tails, I'm a blow it out when I flip that coin. I was hoping, you know, that I can just choose a way out. But I landed on heads, you know, And God, obviously to me, wanted to keep me around, but I didn't know why and I didn't question him. But I made a promise, you know, if I'm going to go and try to live the rest of my life, I'm going to try a little bit happy. I was like the really the most selfish being active ever chose to thing. But I was done pretending. I've been done for pretending for years. And yeah, I seem like a coward way out. Easy, way out. But it was something that I value that problem. And, you know, memorials are made after people. Who die in war. Memorials are made for trans people who balance dreams. I felt proud to be an American soldier and to be able to wear the flag on my shoulder and show that as an American, this is part of paying for our freedom and paying for our rights. The military does employ the most transgender people out of every corporation or any job in the United States. 15,000 people are transgender in the military serving right now. That's 15,000 people that are questioning who they really are and trying to be a soldier protecting the freedom of American rights. They're patriots. They are doing stuff that only 1% of the population does. And to have that cloud over them, I feel, limits them from having their full potential of being the best that they can be. Ironically enough, it was my promotion that outed me after they had saw that my enlistment paperwork said Female. I talked to a sergeant major and sat down, looked me in the face and said, So what are you? And I remember thinking, I'm human first and foremost, and I'm here to do my job. I took my first job, testosterone, and it was like I took my very first breath of life that made me a better person. And it made putting on that uniform so much easier. So I began without telling anybody except my closest friend at the time, and nobody asked any questions for a year. So while wearing a uniform and at work, I was female. I was she. I was her. But outside of work, in civilian clothes, outside of the base, everybody saw me as male. And then I left my command in Hawaii and arrived on the East Coast to begin my deployment training. I arrived by myself. Nobody from my unit was with me and everybody took me again at face value. So I went through uniform issue with the males, and then I went on to do combat training with the males. And then when I arrived in Afghanistan, I was in the barracks with the males like I had been through my entire training. And that's the picture I sent back home to my family whenever I was over there. My mom actually got rid of all my pictures from about time I was one to fairly recently. So 22, 23 years old. It was almost like having those pictures on display or hanging up in the living room or anything like that would be like having a stranger in your house for both of us. So she decided to get rid of them. And now all we have are pictures moving forward. I'm leaving out. Why would you just sit in one spot? I had this funny. Name for these patrols. I'd just like to go ahead and do my part and just try and do my job and live my life. I mean, look at the Army's core values. The loyalty, honor, respect. I mean, like these people, me included. I was honest with my chain of command. I took the courage to to tell them the truth, and they still kicked me out for it. I mean, I go to work scared every day that today is going to be the day they're going to hammer down on me for being mean, for just being mean, for just existing. I obviously joined the military as a male, and after a year of serving in the Army, I began transitioning from male to female. And by the time I left about five and a half years later, I left as a female soldier and definitely had a lot of anxiety that like somebody would call me out on it or somebody would just go in and start pushing the regulations and kick me out. But I remember there was this one instance was probably the last four months that I was in active duty. I was sitting in a conference room and it was me and my battle buddy. We were waiting for a brief and it was just the two of us. And I leaned back in the office chair and my makeup compact had actually fallen out of my cargo pocket. And you just looked at me, looked at the compact, and I was trying to think of some excuse as quickly as possible, like I was holding on to it for another female soldier. I was starting to say something like that, and all I did was reach down, picked it up and handed it to him and he's like, Dude, everybody knows, nobody cares. You're just still the same soldier that I've always hung out with, that I've always worked with. And and it doesn't bother me any. Being openly transgender in the military is found as a behavioral health disorder or mental disorder, and they can kick you out administratively or through a med board for being transgender. It's definitely hard to go from one extreme to the other when I have an amazing weekend with my friends and then wake up Monday morning and put on my uniform and know that I can tell anybody at work how busy my weekend was, what I did. It's it makes you feel separated from everyone around you. Like, this is me and this is me excited. This is me. Living doesn't feel like anything. It feels like normality. It feels like I'm just expressing who I am, what I am, you know, that's like, God made me this way and I want to fully express it. I'm going to fully love it and hold on to it and be able to do what I'm going to do to be me. And no one can take that from me. I mean, they can try as hard as they want, but this is who I am and this is who I always will be as grandmother. I don't care. There is grandmother. Hi, Carla. I saw I was okay. I was terrified. They may not that. Grandma doesn't like me. I say Grandma doesn't like me. So I'm going to get going. I'll talk to you guys later, okay? And I'll. Bye. Love you. The She isn't just busy. I mean, every time she's just busy or is is like I talk to her for a second and then she just walks away. She's been there, like, my whole life. And now since, like, this part of my journey when, like, she can help me and everything is just not there. I talked to a sergeant major, and he made me produce government paperwork that said I was male. And then he sent me back to work. And then only 15, 20 minutes later, I was pulled back again and told to pack my bags and I would be out on the next rotator, had to be escorted back to my room because all of a sudden I was a female and male space. So I had to be supervised to pack my bags and I had to bring everything to the loading docks and wait. And I was surrounded by these people who were going home after a deployment that had lasted them a year. And they were continuing talking about the things they were looking forward to, the things that they couldn't wait to see again, their families, their brothers, their sisters, their kids have a certain meal. And all I wanted to do was go back to work. I always knew that it was really just kind of bound to happen. Eventually, it was only a matter of time that the wrong person would figure me out and kick me out for it. Even though I was sworn in as a female and to the Ohio National Guard, the Battalion XO definitely made sure that you used to regulations in order to kick me out for being transgender. So within a year of being sworn in and completely accepted, I was rejected and kicked out. And even now that I'm a defense contractor, I make three times my salary as an active duty soldier. I'd definitely trade it in a heartbeat just to just to wear the uniform again and be a soldier like I was before. I nobody knew about my secret and nobody knew about the situation I was in. And it was actually easier to be in Afghanistan than it is to be in the States. There was only one thing I really had to do was go out and do missions and that really there's no future, There's no past. There's only that moment. 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