They say transgender people have been serving successfully for years, including openly on and off for the past decade. It gives the defense secretary 60 days to update the medical standards for enlistment and re-enlistment to reflect that change.
And it gives Hegseth 30 days to lay out how he plans to implement it all. The Pentagon has said in recent years that it is impossible to count the total number of transgender troops. The military services say there is no way to track them and that much information is limited due to medical privacy laws. Estimates have hovered between 9, and 12, But it will be very difficult for officials to identify them, even as service members worry about the hunt to root them out. In March , then-Defense Secretary James Mattis released a memo with unprecedented details on the number of transgender forces and how many of them had sought mental health help or were planning to seek surgery.
It said, at that time, there were 8, service members who identified themselves as transgender, and had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. In , 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 , announced the ban was ended.
By March , 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.
The chiefs of all four military services told members of Congress in they were seeing few problems as transgender troops began serving openly. The Navy chief at the time, Adm. John Richardson, said the Navy was dealing with the issue the same way it handled the integration of women sailors on submarines.
