6 months ago
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(NewsNation) — A memo sent to Defense Department leaders Thursday states those with sex dysphoria are no longer eligible for subject service.
This document, written by Darin S. Selnick, acting undersecretary of defence for unit and readiness, states the section indispensable place troops who person been diagnosed with, oregon are being treated for, sex dysphoria by March 26. From there, the Department of Defense has 30 days to region those troops from service. They volition beryllium honorably discharged unless their grounds warrants otherwise, Selnick said.
Gender dysphoria, according to the Mayo Clinic, is “a feeling of distress that tin hap erstwhile a person's sex individuality differs from the enactment assigned astatine birth.” Not each transgender idiosyncratic experiences sex dysphoria.
Military members with sex dysphoria tin get a waiver "on a case-by-case basis, provided determination is simply a compelling Government involvement successful accessing the applicant that straight supports warfighting capabilities," Selnick wrote. To get this waiver, work members person to beryllium they ne'er tried to modulation and show they person lived successful enactment with their commencement enactment "without clinically important distress" for 36 months.
The memo was filed as portion of a lawsuit responding to President Donald Trump's enforcement bid banning transgender troops from serving successful the military.
Selnick, successful the memo, claimed that subject work by radical with sex dysphoria is "not intelligibly accordant with the interests of nationalist security."
However, organizations specified arsenic the American Medical Association person said determination is nary "medically valid reason," including a sex dysphoria diagnosis, to exclude transgender radical from subject service.
A RAND Corp. study from 2016 that was commissioned by the Pentagon recovered that allowing transgender radical to service demonstrated nary antagonistic effect connected portion cohesion, operational effectiveness oregon readiness.
"This is an unconscionable prohibition that forces the removal of talented work members who enactment their lives connected the enactment for our federation and slams the doorway connected qualified patriots who conscionable each modular and privation thing much than to service their country," Jennifer Levi, elder manager of transgender and queer rights astatine GLAD, said successful a statement.
Transgender radical person been eligible to service successful the subject since 2016, but the Trump medication attempted to contented a prohibition successful 2019, though it was reversed successful 2021.
"Transgender Americans person served openly and honorably successful the U.S. Armed Forces for astir a decade. Thousands of transgender troops are presently serving and are afloat qualified for the positions successful which they serve," SPARTA Pride, an advocacy radical for transgender work members, said in a statement. "No argumentation volition ever erase transgender Americans' publication to history, warfighting, oregon subject excellence."
The Associated Press and NewsNation spouse The HIll contributed to this report.
