Transgender troop ban

House rebuffs Trump on transgender troop ban

By CONNOR O’BRIEN

The House on Thursday rebuffed a move by the Trump administration to restrict transgender individuals from serving in the military.

Voting 238-185, the House approved a nonbinding resolution opposing transgender troop limits just weeks before the Pentagon's new policy is set to take effect.

The measure is the majority Democrats' first swipe at Trump's reversal of the Obama-era policy allowing transgender individuals to serve openly, which the president announced in a tweet in July 2017.

Democrats have hammered Trump and the Pentagon for undoing the policy on a whim without consulting military leaders.

On the House floor Thursday, they slammed the policy as "targeted discrimination" without regard to whether transgender individuals can meet military standards.

“What this policy is primarily based on is ignorance and bias against the transgender community,” said House Armed Services Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.).

"There was no problem. This was not an issue ... until the president decided in his words he wanted to ban transgender people from serving in the military," Smith said. "He sent out a tweet ... and the military has had to backfill that tweet with a policy."

The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.), affirms the House's opposition to Trump's move to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military and "rejects the flawed scientific and medical claims upon which it is based."

It also urges the Pentagon not to reinstate a ban on transgender troops and "maintain an inclusive policy allowing qualified transgender Americans to enlist and serve" in the military.

The Pentagon, which was caught flat-footed by Trump's abrupt announcement, has since refined the final policy under former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

The new guidelines are not a blanket ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, but, among other provisions, they would require troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria after the policy takes effect to serve in their biological sex. They would also bar people with a history of gender dysphoria from joining unless they've been medically stable in their biological sex for 36 months and haven't transitioned.

Only five Republicans supported the measure on the House floor Thursday. One voted present.

The top Armed Services Republican, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, criticized Democrats for politicizing national security issues by pushing a nonbinding messaging bill. He contended Democrats mischaracterized the new policy and the rigor that went into the change.

“Well before any presidential tweet, Secretary of Defense Mattis had put a delay on implementation of the policy that had previously been announced so that there could be a six-month review,” Thornberry said. “I recommend that members actually read it. … They’ll see the serious and thoughtful approach that the department took to this issue.”

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), one of the top opponents of the Obama administration’s 2016 transgender troop policy, argued undoing the policy is a matter of military readiness and that the Pentagon should be permitted “to make the best medical and military judgment” about who can and can’t serve.

“We should not carve out exceptions for an entire population,” Hartzler said. “Military service is a privilege, not a right”

The policy is likely to continue to be disputed in federal court. A federal appeals court, however, recently removed the remaining legal injunctions against the policy, allowing it to take effect on April 12.

Regardless, newly empowered House Democrats could push to overturn Trump's policy in the annual National Defense Authorization Act, slated to hit the House floor this summer.

Still, overturning transgender troop restrictions faces long odds in the Senate, where Armed Services Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a staunch social conservative, opposes it.