Hegseth Barred Trans Troops - Yet Navy And Marine Boards Are Voting To Keep Them
Military boards set up to push transgender troops out of the service are instead voting to keep many of them, the New York Times reported Friday, in a quiet break with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's ban.
Nine of the 12 service members who have come before the boards have been approved to stay, according to the Times. Boards at Marine Corps Base Quantico, assigned to carry out the removals, "were doing the opposite," the paper said, and Navy boards given strict instructions to force out sailors were "voting to let them stay." A Marine staff sergeant who appeared in August thought his career was over, and the panel approved him.
The Air Force is the exception. The Times found no similar pattern there, where transgender airmen are being discharged quickly. The Pentagon has not said how many hearings have been held or how many people have been removed, and the proceedings are closed, even to spouses.
Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force lawyer now at Southwestern Law School, told the Times the boards "are being told to do something that they know is wrong."
The boards are the last step in a removal campaign that began with a January 2025 executive order. In a September 2025 speech at Quantico, Hegseth told troops, "No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses." The Supreme Court let the ban take effect on May 6, 2025, and Hegseth's May 8 memo gave active-duty troops until June 6 and reservists until July 7 to leave voluntarily before involuntary separation began. Pentagon data from December 2024 counted about 4,240 service members with a gender dysphoria diagnosis.
The boards were designed to reach one result. Priya Rashid, a military attorney who represents transgender service members, told NPR in February that the outcome is "generally predetermined" and put the cost of assembling each board at $22,000.
An October 2025 Pentagon memo lets commanders overturn a board's decision to let a transgender service member stay. The memo, from Undersecretary Anthony Tata and obtained by AP, breaks with longstanding policy that boards act independently. It also requires transgender troops to appear in uniforms matching their birth sex, and a hearing proceeds without them if they refuse.
