Haley Britsky
Appearances
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
Individuals who have a diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria are no longer eligible to serve.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
All service members will identify as only either male or female, which the policy says is unchangeable during a person's life. And it says their pronouns must reflect that. And it also disqualifies the use of DOD funds for medical procedures and things like hormone therapy and other procedures related to gender transition and things like that.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
It lays out exceptions for individuals currently serving in the military who will be separated under this policy. You know, it'll be a case by case basis of if a service member is kept in the military despite having a history or a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
If there is a, quote, government interest in keeping them in uniform because they directly support what they say is warfighting capabilities. It also says that they, you know, there are other exceptions. And if they have 36 months of what they say is stability in their sex and can demonstrate they've never attempted to transition and that they can adhere to the standards laid out in the military.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
They lay out a few exceptions for people. It's kind of unclear how many people will fall into that category. And especially when we talk about warfighting capabilities, well, what does that actually mean? How will commanders view that or define that within this process? All of that is still kind of in a gray area at this point, as we haven't really started separating people quite yet.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
Do we know how many people this will affect? We heard last week a senior defense official told reporters that there were a little over 4,000 troops who'd been diagnosed with gender dysphoria across all three components. So that's active duty, military, National Guard, and the Reserve. You know, important to note that not all transgender people have a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
So it's kind of unclear how many people, at the end of the day, this is really going to impact people. Between 2014 and 2025, roughly 1,000 individuals in the military received gender-affirming surgery. So that's sort of what we're waiting to see is, okay, in practice, how many people will be impacted by this and ultimately how many would be eligible for waivers or even want to seek a waiver.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
So a lot of times what we hear is that this is tied to their deployability.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
Meaning that, you know, if an individual is undergoing a medical procedure, they may be considered non-deployable for so much time. That also is the case for pregnancy or for specific injuries or bone breaks, things like that. A non-deployable status is not specifically tied to gender dysphoria or transgender individuals. So that's oftentimes one of the reasonings that they use.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
But what we see in the executive order and then in the Pentagon policy that resulted from it is they kind of go a step further than just focusing on the medical readiness of these individuals. They kind of hone in on their value system and morals by saying that individuals who have gender dysphoria or have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
that they are inconsistent with the honesty, humility, and integrity that's required in the military.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
It goes a step further than just saying medically you may not be able to serve, physically you may not be able to serve. It's saying that you do not align with our values of humility and integrity and honesty. That is sort of has been made policy by existing in the executive order and within this new policy memo from the Pentagon. But we haven't seen a lot of explanation of that point just yet.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
What the memo says is that if you elect to voluntarily separate within 30 days of that memo, you will get two times the separation pay, as if you wait to be involuntarily separated.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
And separation pay is, you know, it's kind of a complicated calculus, but it essentially boils down to, it's calculated on how long you've served in the military and what you were getting paid at the time of your separation.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
And so the Pentagon is saying, hey, if you are a transgender individual or an individual who's been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, if you know that you are going to be involuntarily separated under this policy, you can go ahead and start the process yourself. And by voluntarily separating, you'll get paid twice as much.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
And so we don't have a lot of answers as to how that will be calculated or what that will really look like in practice, other than it's clearly an incentive hoping to get individuals to start the process sooner rather than later of separating themselves from service.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
Yeah, so there was legal challenging in 2017 to the ban that he issued then. I think it was at least four different lawsuits who were saying that this was a form of sex discrimination. The Supreme Court let that ban take effect just a couple of years later in 2019.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
So it did move forward in that sense. And then President Biden, when he took office, reversed it.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
So this is essentially a reversal of a reversal of the original policy saying that, you know, this is going to move forward. So, yeah, it's unclear where the legal status or where legally this memo or this policy can move forward given the new lawsuits against it. It's, you know, we may see it end up back in higher court. It's kind of unclear at this point where it's going to go.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
But it's certainly something that is playing out in the courts. And, you know, just as recently as this weekend, we saw more filings in which the Defense Department was given a Saturday deadline to answer some questions from the courts, which included things like how much money has the department spent on some of these procedures and how many people are included under this definition.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
answer in the filing saying that essentially they didn't have enough time um to figure this out that it would have taken a few more weeks than they were allowed uh but it's still very actively um being debated in court and certainly something that we're going to be continuing to follow when do these separations have to be done by what's the deadline here
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
For those who are voluntarily separating, as I said, they have 30 days to elect to voluntarily separate. Outside of that, the policy says that the service secretary, so Secretary of the Army, of the Navy, Air Force, etc., that they need to begin establishing procedures to identify those troops within 30 days for separation. and then begin separating them 30 days after that.
Today, Explained
Serving your country while trans
So it sounds like roughly 60 days before separations will officially begin within the military services.