A federal court back in November ordered the Trump administration to begin accepting transgender recruits on January 1 into the U.S. Military, per a previous Obama policy. In the weeks that followed, several federal courts, including at least one appeals court, ruled Trump’s attempt to ban transgender service members could not stand and ordered him to begin accepting transgender service members January 1.
The New York Times reports “nearly all … transgender recruits who have tried to join up since a federal court ordered the Trump administration not to ban them from the military,” are “still waiting” to hear back from the Pentagon, run by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (photo, with Trump) after having applied on or after January 1.
Since those federal court rulings, “scores have applied — but it appears almost none are being accepted.”
“The Defense Department refused requests for statistics on transgender enlistments. But Sparta, an organization for transgender recruits, troops and veterans, says that out of its 140 members who are trying to enlist, only two have made it into the service since Jan. 1.”
Among those The Times mentions are a man who has “two martial arts black belts,” “aced the military aptitude test, and organized the stack of medical records required to show he was stable and healthy enough to serve.”
Others include a rugby coach, a substitute teacher, someone who “repairs tractors and heaves bales of hay for the cattle that he and his grandmother keep on a small hillside farm in Appalachia,” and another applicant who “moves 200-pound tanks of carbon dioxide for a job creating special effects for Broadway shows.”
It seems clear the Trump administration is doing everything it can to find reasons to reject any applicant who is transgender, and at a time when the military is in desperate need of new recruits.
“One applicant in Ohio spent five months submitting more and more medical records, and then was rejected in late May because of knee surgery he had as an infant,” 25 years prior.
“We’ve heard people are meeting with mystifying obstacles,” Shannon Minter, the the legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). “We want to give the military the benefit of the doubt, but at this point so few applicants have been accepted, there is reason to be concerned that there is some passive resistance to the injunctions, and people are getting slow-walked.”