The Military Law Task Force is outraged at the current military effort to rush through discharge of transgender personnel, before a federal court can act to halt involuntary transgender discharges–in the process running roughshod over these servicemembers’ legal rights.
This month, news broke about the military effort to speed up discharges of trans personnel even before litigation is complete in Talbott v.Trump, the challenge to the trans ban. A fourth injunction against the ban was issued this spring from the D.C. Court of Appeals – which also, in June, extended the plaintiff/class to include all trans personnel. We were alerted to this effort by SPARTA PRIDE, a national organization representing transgender servicemembers and vets. MLTF was not surprised to learn that the Department of Justice was granted 45 days to respond to the injunction; we are, however, startled to learn that in those 45 days, the Pentagon plans to force out all trans troops in “special separation boards.” We oppose the establishment of these boards, staffed by specially chosen Judge Advocates with a poisonous mission.
MLTF is particularly concerned about the potential abuse of both the Military Health System and the Office of Special Trial Counsel for the semi-secret discharge boards, as described by SPARTA and the New York Times. SPARTA has received reports that “Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC) is contacting individual commands for individual the status updates, demanding that commanders with transgender troops provide immediate updates and take rapid action.” OSTC, created in 2023 in the wake of sexual harassment and assault scandals, is structured independent of the military justice system; each service’s OSTC is led by a Lead Special Trial Counsel who reports directly to the Service Secretary – not to the Judge Advocate General, not to the Chief of Staff, and not to any commander. This reporting structure was designed to insulate prosecutorial decisions from command influence, to prevent commands from protecting offenders. The Pentagon appears to be using that structure to cut off appeal channels: commands are being pressured by JAGs to rush cases through in mere days.
The practice appears to be military-wide. Priya Rashid, of the Trans Representation Project of the National Institute of Military Justice, reports that in her Navy cases, many of the assigned JAs “have Special Trial Counsel in their signature line.” As for the Air Force, SPARTA has received reports that “an Air Force email directive that gives local commanders only three business days to send the complete case file to the office managing the involuntary separation process.”
The process also puts the entire DoD medical establishment into the search for trans personnel. An August 4 Army operations order, an “implementation guide” for such involuntary separations, lists servicemembers’ annual physical or “readiness” assessments as routes to declare them subject to separation, adding that a commander may order a review “when they have personal knowledge of individuals with gender dysphoria.” The same memo actually excludes mental health practitioners from participation in the reviews. Thus is gender dysphoria twisted into a crime; thus is every structure built to promote the health of personnel, with built-in means of appeal, twisted into the means to facilitate immediate separation of these personnel.
MLTF stands ready to help servicemembers and organizations fighting against these kangaroo courts. Whether servicemembers are fighting discharge or trying to navigate the best possible exit, the Task Force pledges to connect them with counsel and other resources. And we’ll keep working toward the day when none of this is necessary.
| Image via Wikimedia Commons: “In December 2025,Congresswoman Deb Haaland (NM-01), a member of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, met with transgender troops who will be testifying on the administration’s order to bar transgender people from serving in the military and the Supreme Court’s action to uphold the administration’s policy at a subcommittee hearing. “We should be thankful to anyone who has decided to serve our country, but this administration has decided to single out a group of people for political reasons,” said Congresswoman Deb Haaland. “Transgender servicemembers honorably serve our country, and are not any different than any other service member: they come from families in which service is a tradition, they go through the same training and abide by the same requirements, and they are actively serving overseas. They deserve fairness and respect.” |
| Date |
