Politics

Former Joint Chiefs Chair Trashes Trump’s Ban On Trans Troops

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Kevin Daley Supreme Court correspondent
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Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, the principal military advisor to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, filed a brief in support of a coalition of LGBT rights groups challenging President Donald Trump’s order banning trans persons from service in the armed forces.

Lambda Legal and OutServe-SLDN brought a lawsuit against Trump’s directive in August in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Writing in support of the effort, Mullen says the president’s order disregards the prior judgement of the military with respect to trans-servicemen and compromises military readiness. He writes:

To reverse this policy by implementing a ban on open service would go against the best interests of thousands of service members currently serving. As the Pentagon has pointed out, it may also deprive our military of trained and skilled service members and leave vacancies that may not be easy to fill. This would harm military readiness as well as morale. The military’s prior considered judgment on this matter should not be disregarded and we should not breach the faith of service members who defend our freedoms, including those who are transgender.

The former chairman offered no specifics to reinforce his claims.

The Lambda/OutServe complaint alleges the policy violates the equal protection and substantive due process guarantees. It further claims the order violates the First Amendment as it “impermissibly burden[s] and chill[s] the exercise of the individual plaintiffs’ and of the organizational plaintiffs’ transgender members’ constitutionally protected speech, expression, expressive conduct, and expressive association, based on the content and viewpoint of their speech.”

There is no authoritative figure as to how many transgender persons currently serve in the armed forces. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT political lobby, claims there are some 15,000 transgender servicemen. The leading study on the question was conducted by the RAND Corporation, a left-leaning think tank, in 2016. RAND concluded there are between 1,320 and 6,630 active duty trans service members, though they emphasize it is difficult to produce an accurate figure.

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