It was nearly a decade ago when the Obama administration ended an existing ban on transgender Americans serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced in June 2016 that transgender service members are “talented and trained Americans who are serving their country with honor and distinction.”
Donald Trump disagreed. In fact, around this time eight years ago, the Republican president announced he was rolling back the clock and undoing the Obama-era progress. Asked to defend his discriminatory policy, Trump not only struggled, he also seemed confused about the substantive details of his own actions.
After Trump lost his re-election bid, Joe Biden reversed the reversal and restored the protections for transgender service members. When the Republican returned to power once more, he re-imposed the restrictions from his first term.
As part of the incumbent president’s policy, there isn’t just a ban on transgender Americans volunteering to put their lives on the line for their country, there’s also an effort to identify transgender Americans who are already serving — and kick them out of the military.
It’s against this backdrop that Reuters reported:
The Air Force is denying early retirement to all transgender service members with between 15 and 18 years of military service, opting instead to force them out with no retirement benefits, according to a memo seen by Reuters. These longer-serving transgender service members will have the same choice as more junior ones: quit or be forced out, with corresponding lump-sum payments as they walk out the door, the August 4 memo says.
In other words, there might very well be transgender service members who are thinking to themselves, “I’d prefer to keep serving, but if the Air Force no longer wants me because of my gender identity, I’ll just retire.” The Air Force is effectively responding, “If you retire, you’ll be eligible for retirement benefits, and we don’t want you to have them.”
What’s more, according to Reuters’ report, many service members had already been approved for early retirement, but those approvals were rescinded. An Air Force spokesperson said that a subset of retirement applications were “prematurely approved.”
Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights told Reuters the developments are “devastating,” adding, “This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members.”
