Biden ends Trump-era trans military ban. ‘America’s strength is found in its diversity’
President Joe Biden on Monday lifted a ban on transgender Americans serving in the military.
Biden signed an executive order repealing the ban announced by former President Donald Trump in 2017. The order is one of the numerous executive actions — some overturning Trump-era policies — the president has signed since taking office Wednesday.
During his campaign, Biden had promised to reverse the transgender military ban and direct the U.S. Defense Department to “allow transgender service members to serve openly, receive needed medical treatment and be free from discrimination.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during his Senate confirmation hearing last week he supports lifting the ban.
“If you’re fit and you’re qualified to serve and you can maintain the standards, you should be allowed to serve, and you can expect that I will support that throughout,” Austin said, according to ABC News.
The controversial ban took effect in 2019 after nearly two years of legal battles, The Associated Press reports. It required most individuals to serve “in their birth gender” and barred transgender troops and recruits from transitioning to another sex.
The policy was heavily criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups as “cruel and irrational,” CNN reports.
“President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity,” a release from the White House says. “This question of how to enable all qualified Americans to serve in the military is easily answered by recognizing our core values. America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive.”
A 2016 study from The RAND Corporation estimated between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender people were actively serving in the military at the time out of 1.3 million service members in total.
VoteVets, a group of “progressive veterans in America,” released a statement Monday, saying Trump’s previous ban “insults our professional military.”
“President Biden and Secretary Austin are to be commended for so swiftly moving to allow the very best Americans to serve,” the statement said.
Patricia King — who the group says is the first openly transgender person to serve as an infantry soldier — said in the statement that the “transgender community has been told once again that we can serve the nation we love, we can be heroes and that we belong everywhere that life is lived.”
“We have been shown once again that unique perspectives, combined with shared ideals makes us stronger,” King said in the statement.
Trump had argued that allowing transgender troops to serve in the military would lead to “tremendous medical costs and disruption,” CNN reports.
When the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect in 2019 in an unsigned 5-4 order, the Pentagon released a statement saying it’s critical the Defense Department “be permitted to implement personnel policies that it determines are necessary to ensure the most lethal and combat effective fighting force in the world,” according to CNN.
But the RAND Corporation study in 2016 found that allowing transgender people to serve in the military would have “minimal impact on readiness and health care costs.”
In 2011, President Obama signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ a Clinton-era policy that barred openly gay or lesbian service members from serving in the armed forces.
Trump’s ban, which he announced on Twitter in 2017, overturned on Obama-era policy that would have allowed transgender people to serve in the military.
Biden’s executive order immediately bars the “involuntary separations, discharges and denials of reenlistment or continuation of service on the basis of gender identity,” the White House release says.
“Transgender service members will no longer be subject to the possibility of discharge or separation on the basis of gender identity; transgender service members can serve in their gender when transition is complete and the gender marker in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS) is changed and transgender service members should know that they are accepted throughout the U.S. military,” it says.
Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, called the repeal of the ban a “vital step in restoring America’s promise of equality.”
“Anyone with the courage and sense of duty to serve this country should be allowed to do so — with our thanks and gratitude,” he tweeted.
Justin Amash, who previously represented Michigan in the House as a Republican, called the repeal a “win for equality before the law.”
“Transgender persons should not be prohibited from serving in the Armed Forces on the sole basis of being transgender,” Amash tweeted.
Alphonso David — president of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ rights organization — said in a statement that “transgender patriots” can now “live and serve openly as themselves.”
“The government will begin the process to eliminate an arbitrary and discriminatory executive action that has not only harmed transgender service members but our entire military,” David wrote in the statement. “The greatest military in the world will again value readiness over bias, and qualifications over discrimination.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 8:29 AM with the headline "Biden ends Trump-era trans military ban. ‘America’s strength is found in its diversity’."
