Biden to lift restrictions on transgender military service members

Administration could act as soon as Tuesday to reverse former president Donald Trump’s directive.

Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, greets Lloyd Austin outside the Pentagon last week. Picture: AFP

The White House is expected to lift restrictions on transgender service members in the US military as soon as Tuesday AEDT, according to people familiar with the matter, reversing a directive by former president Donald Trump.

The move was expected after President Joe Biden on his first day in office signed an executive order aimed at preventing discrimination based on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He directed all agencies to address any policies in place that discriminated against individuals on either basis.

The Pentagon restrictions, put in place after Mr Trump announced his decision by tweet in July 2017, were expected to be an early target of Mr Biden’s order.

Mr Biden wanted to wait until his pick to be Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, was installed, one person familiar with the matter said. General Austin’s first full day at work will be Tuesday, after his Senate confirmation last week.

During testimony at his confirmation hearing last week, General Austin indicated he would support Mr Biden’s plan to lift restrictions on transgender service in response to a question from Democrat senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

“I truly believe … that if you’re fit and you’re qualified to serve and you can maintain the standards, you should be allowed to serve,” General Austin said. “And, you can expect that I will support that throughout.”

Shortly after General Austin’s testimony, advocacy groups said they expected the restrictions to be lifted quickly.

“It’s heartening that Lloyd Austin fully understands the urgency of ending the military’s harmful transgender ban,” said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Centre, a research institute and advocacy organisation that works on military diversity policy. “Very little needs to be done administratively to finally end discrimination against transgender troops, and we look forward to the arrival of a fully inclusive policy very soon.”

The White House declined to comment.

Mr Trump’s ban caught his ­defence secretary at the time, Jim Mattis, by surprise. Rules concerning transgender service members had been eased the year before by the Obama administration in a move that also provided for military medical care for the condition known as gender dysphoria. Gender dysphoria is a condition that many professional associations have said requires medical treatment. For instance, gender dysphoria is recognised by the American Psychiatric Association as a medical issue. When diagnosed by a medical professional, transition therapy and reassignment surgery is considered by some insurers and states as a medically necessary treatment.

Opponents to transgender service members, including some conservative congressional Republicans, have said their presence disrupts military readiness and imposes heavy medical costs on the military’s healthcare system. They also have questioned whether transgender service members are as capable as others in the military of deploying whenever and wherever needed, a contention that has been rebutted by advocacy groups.

The decision by the Trump administration led to a series of lawsuits, in some cases leaving commanders unsure of how to proceed. In 2019, the Supreme Court issued brief written orders that temporarily blocked the effect of multiple lower court rulings that had prevented Mr Trump and the Pentagon from implementing restrictions on transgender service members.

Mr Biden is expected to undo the restrictions through another executive order. He has issued more than two dozen executive orders in his first days in office, focusing on areas such as the environment, workers and the role of government in the economy, drawing criticism from Republicans.

A 2016 study for the Pentagon by the Rand Corporation calculated medical costs borne by the military for including transgender service members at between $US2.4m and $US8.4m annually. That is a fraction of a per cent of the military’s healthcare expenditures.

According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 9000 service members who identify as transgender, with 1000 or fewer who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Independent estimates have put the total number of transgender service members at about 16,000.

The Wall Street Journal