Military/Military Ban

The U.S. Armed Forces has held a longtime ban against trans people based on policies by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). In 2015, under the Obama administration, the DoD began the process of updating its policies to be more inclusive of trans people in the military. In 2019, however, under the Trump administration, the ban was reinstated to prohibit most trans people from military service. Scholars and equal rights advocates described these policies as discriminatory and in opposition to recommendations from contemporary research on trans people and the military. The existing literature shows that the inclusion of trans people in the military has no negative effects on operational effectiveness, unit morale, or cohesion, and the added cost of implementing trans-related health care in the ...