Pentagon to restart gender-affirming care for transgender service members

The Defense Department will resume providing gender-affirming care for service members, a blow to the Trump administration’s effort to eliminate transgender individuals from the U.S. military.

A Pentagon memo dated Monday and revealed Thursday states the department will restore surgical procedures and cross-sex hormone therapy to individuals, including dependents of troops, as first reported by Politico.

“Service members and all other covered beneficiaries 19 years of age or older may receive appropriate care for their diagnosis of [gender dysphoria], including mental health care and counseling and newly initiated or ongoing cross-sex hormone therapy,” according to the memo, signed by Stephen Ferrara, acting assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs. “Service members may also receive voice therapy and appropriate surgical procedures.”

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.

The directive comes after two federal judges last month blocked the Pentagon’s transgender service member ban and a third temporarily blocked the military from separating two transgender Air Force members in a more limited ruling. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C., who first blocked the ban, said the administration’s policy is “soaked in animus.” The Pentagon is appealing that decision, and earlier Thursday the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to allow President Trump to enforce his ban.

Trump has long sought to bar transgender service members from the ranks, both in his first term — a policy that President Biden overturned — and again in January when he declared transgender troops can’t meet the “rigorous standards” needed to serve.  

In his latest ban, Trump sought to both kick out currently serving troops with a diagnosis or history of gender dysphoria and bar potential service members with that diagnosis from enlisting.

In Ferrara’s memo, he states that the department will return to the Biden-era medical policy for transgender service members because of the court order halting the administration’s restrictions.

Troops can now begin receiving care through military medical treatment facilities and the Supplemental Health Care Program (SHCP), which gives troops the ability to visit civilian doctors. 

All waivers through the SHCP that had been “paused and subsequently cancelled are hereby reinstated,” according to Ferrara.

The move is a setback for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has made culture war issues a focal point in what he says is a quest to bring the military back to its main objective of being a fighting force.

In a Wednesday speech at the Army War College, Hegseth told students and staff that there is “no more social engineering, no more climate change worship, no more electric tanks, no more gender confusion, no more pronouns, no more excuses, no more quotas, no more woke bulls‑‑‑” in the military.