The Trump administration has asserted that the military will have to “ensure that the tens of thousands’ of service members dispersed across the United States’ responsible for implementing accession policies have a working knowledge or in-depth medical understanding of the standards.”
In a new study from the Palm Center, three former Service Secretaries have cast doubt on the those assertions. They say that most training required to begin processing transgender applicants was completed by the time of the presidential transition in January of this past year.
The study is Training Recruiters and Examiners to Evaluate Transgender Applicants Is Not Complicated or Time-Consuming.
The study was authored by Vice Admiral Donald Arthur, Major General Gale Pollock and Admiral Alan Steinman.
Admiral Arthur was Surgeon General of the Navy, General Pollock was Acting Surgeon General of the Army, and Admiral Steinman was Director of Health and Safety (Surgeon General equivalent) of the Coast Guard.
The ACLU filed briefs on Friday in the district court and today at the appeals court opposing the government’s latest anti-transgender motions. The ACLU argues that allowing the ban to go into place would cause irreparable harm to current and potential service members who are transgender.
Three courts have now held that President Trump’s attempt to ban transgender people from the military is blatantly unconstitutional, but the Pentagon continues to drag its heels and try to implement Trump’s discriminatory ban. The ACLU will fight every step of the way for the right of transgender people to live and serve their country with dignity, and we won’t stop until the full ban is struck down permanently.
--Josh Block, ACLU
Recruiters do not need additional training to process applications from transgender candidates because their only relevant responsibility is to help applicants prepare a package of medical information, a simple and straightforward task.
Medical evaluators do not require in-depth training because they are already well versed in DOD’s method for deriving objective and relatively simple assessments of medical fitness, and because potential co-morbidities [fitness concerns] of gender dysphoria and its treatment are not unique to transgender people…Teaching medical evaluators to process applications from transgender candidates requires less than one day of training.
--the report
The President’s effort to reinstate the transgender ban has effectively forced the military to make incorrect claims in court in an obligatory effort to defend the ban against all facts and evidence.
--Aaron Belkin, Palm Center
Since President Trump issued his destructive order to ban transgender people from military service, more and more military leaders and experts are speaking out to support transgender troops and the importance of basing military policy on sound research and facts, not on political considerations. Extensive research has shown that allowing qualified transgender candidates to serve strengthens our military and our country. We cannot allow this administration to weaken our military based on false stereotypes and irrational bias.
--Shannon Minter, NCLR