Two national LGBTQ legal organizations filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from serving and enlisting in the military. The suit was filed on behalf of six active duty trans service members and two trans people seeking to enlist.
“This ban betrays fundamental American values of equal opportunity and judging people on their merit,” Jennifer Levi, the senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), said in a statement. “It slams the door on qualified patriots who meet every standard and want nothing more than to serve their country, simply to appease a political agenda. That’s not just un-American, it makes our country weaker by pushing away talented service members who put their lives on the line every day for our nation.”
GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed the lawsuit against Trump and several military officials in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia one day after the president signed an executive order restricting transgender military service. The order, titled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” reinstates a policy from Trump’s first term and rescinds a 2021 order by then-President Joe Biden that allowed trans people to enlist and serve openly.
The new policy is intended “to protect the American people and our homeland as the world’s most lethal and effective fighting force,” according the executive order. It adds that “the pursuit of military excellence cannot be diluted to accommodate political agendas or other ideologies harmful to unit cohesion.”
The executive order requires the Department of Defense to update its medical standards within 60 days to restrict coverage of certain transition-related care, “end invented and identification-based pronoun usage” and bar people assigned male at birth from using women’s sleeping, changing and bathing facilities.
“President Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military discriminates against Plaintiffs based on their sex and based on their transgender status, without lawful justification, in violation of the Equal Protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment,” Tuesday’s lawsuit states. “Rather than being based on any legitimate governmental purpose, the ban reflects animosity toward transgender people because of their transgender status.”
The White House did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the lawsuit.
One of the plaintiffs, Army Second Lieutenant Nicolas Talbott, is a 31-year-old transgender man who has served with distinction in an Army Reserves unit in Pennsylvania, according to the lawsuit. Talbott, the suit adds, was “named Honor Graduate at basic combat training by his drill sergeants for going above and beyond in training and stepping up to leadership roles.”
“When you put on the uniform, differences fall away and what matters is your ability to do the job,” Talbott said in a statement. “Every individual must meet the same objective and rigorous qualifications in order to serve. It has been my dream and my goal to serve my country for as long as I can remember. My being transgender has no bearing on my dedication to the mission, my commitment to my unit, or my ability to perform my duties in accordance with the high standards expected of me and every servicemember.”
The Defense Department doesn’t publicly report how many transgender people are serving in the military, and estimates vary widely. Two reports that came out before trans people were able to serve openly — a 2014 report by UCLA Law’s Williams Institute and a 2016 report from the Rand Corp. — estimated there were 15,500 (Williams Institute) and between 2,150 and 10,790 trans people serving.
In addition to the executive order restricting military service for trans people, Trump issued an executive order hours after his inauguration targeting “gender ideology.” The order declared that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that “these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” resulting in the State Department freezing all passport applications requesting a sex-marker change.
