Ex-Secretaries Say DOD Lied About Transgender Policy Law360 (March 5, 2019, 9:40 PM EST) --
Three Obama-era service secretaries have accused U.S. Department of Defense officials of misleading Congress about the DOD's "transgender ban" to try to justify that policy, saying transgender troops must meet the same standards as every other service member and are not given "special accommodations."
DOD officials made "misleading claims" in a Feb. 27 hearing before the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee regarding military service by transgender people in an effort to justify the Trump administration's "wrong-headed ban," Ray Mabus, Deborah Lee James and Eric Fanning said in a statement issued through policy research institute the Palm Center. The statement, dated Sunday, was released Monday.
"Under inclusive policy that is currently in effect, transgender service members must meet exactly the same fitness and deployability standards as everybody else, but the witnesses ignored data confirming the success of that policy while making the untrue assertion that holding all service members to the same standards affords 'special accommodations' to transgender troops," the former service secretaries said. Mabus was Navy Secretary, James the Air Force Secretary, and Fanning the Army Secretary when then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced in 2016 that the DOD would change its personnel policies to allow transgender troops to serve openly for the first time — a policy President Donald Trump moved to walk back in 2017.
"There is no defensible rationale for imposing 'don't ask, don't tell' on honorably serving transgender troops," the trio said Monday. A representative for the DOD was not immediately available for comment late on Tuesday.
The former service secretaries' statement followed a Feb. 26 letter signed by 41 retired high-ranking military officers arguing that the service of transgender troops has no negative effect on military readiness, and came alongside a similar report issued by the Palm Center on Monday, authored by several current and former military institute professors. The professors accused the military officials who appeared at the congressional hearing — James Stewart, acting as the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and Vice Adm. Raquel Bono, the director of the Defense Health Agency — of making a range of deceptive claims to Congress about military service by transgender people. Those alleged deceptions were related to military readiness, deployability and mental health issues faced by transgender people, the professors said. And the officials' attempts to try to justify the Trump administration's transgender policy as being based on a medical diagnosis rather than gender identity were also misleading, according to the report.
Stewart and Bono's claims — which also faced pushback from several committee Democrats during the hearing — went against "global medical consensus" and the DOD's own data to instead effectively echo the "Mattis Report" underlying the new transgender policy, they claimed. That report, named after former Defense Secretary James Mattis, has been accused by challengers of being an after-the-fact justification for effectively banning transgender troops. Under the Trump administration's policy, issued in March 2018, transgender people may join or serve in the military only if they don't have gender dysphoria — a disconnect between biological sex and the gender with which they identify, which causes distress — and have not already transitioned between genders, with limited exceptions for current troops.
That policy was a revision of an August 2017 presidential memorandum issued by Trump, which would have imposed a blanket ban on military service by transgender people. The president had cited alleged negative effects on military readiness and unit cohesion stemming from the Obama-era open service policy, as well as purportedly "tremendous" related medical costs. The Trump administration's policy, however, has yet to go into effect amid a series of lawsuits.
Although the U.S. Supreme Court has stayed one set of preliminary injunctions blocking the policy, pending a circuit court appeal, and the D.C. Circuit has dissolved another injunction, there is still one remaining injunction in place in Maryland federal court. The government asked the Maryland court to lift its injunction following the Supreme Court's stay order, but it has yet to do so, prompting the government to file a writ of mandamus on Friday asking the Fourth Circuit to make the district court comply with its request. https://ift.tt/2XD9FzA
...
See this link: https://www.law360.com/employment/articles/1135399/ex-secretaries-say-dod-lied-about-transgender-policy?nl_pk=8a8ce1fc-75c7-4ce5-917e-8a07a0ec3dcd&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=employment
